Column: No deal with Connecticut tribes for Keno games

The proposal to turn on keno gambling throughout Connecticut has been cloaked in secrecy from the start, beginning with an end-of-the-session General Assembly vote last year, in which a deal was announced.

The keno scheme, which has millions in new budget-closing revenues attached, was officially made public at the close of the legislature's session, a surprise announcement that came without any prior warning, without hearings or public input.

It was the state's Democratic majority acting at its most imperious and worst.

Since then, the public has gotten little notice about how the fast-paced game would roll out. There's been no marketing plan made public, for instance, to indicate exactly where restaurant and bar venues will be located or how much retail keno might expand gambling beyond lottery players.

State officials initially said the new games could be up and running by the end of 2013. Then they said keno would be running before the end of the fiscal year, by June.

And yet last week, two legislative researchers mentioned, seemingly offhand, during a legislative task force hearing on installing slot machines outside the Indian casinos that there is still no keno agreement with the casino-operating Indian tribes.