Members of the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board feel they are saving taxpayers money despite approving for themselves the option of either obtaining a state-leased car, being reimbursed for a private lease at up to $650 a month, or using their own vehicle and claiming mileage at 40.5 cents per mile.

They say they've already saved more money than the cars will cost by turning thumbs down to an early plan calling for board members to have personal offices and staffs scattered around the state. Instead, the board has opted for a centralized staff in Harrisburg.

"We killed the staffs . . . because it's a waste of money, in our judgment," said Thomas "Tad" Decker, gaming board chairman. He told a Harrisburg reporter, "So, if you want to write that we're (leasing state cars), also write that we cut costs tremendously . . . from what was originally anticipated."

There's no question that the central-office concept will save money, since it will not require leasing of numerous office spaces; equipping those offices with computers, telephones, fax machines and other equipment needed for them to function properly; and duplicating staff positions, when fewer employees in a central office setting will be able to handle the board's business adequately.

Nevertheless, state taxpayers are justified in wondering why gaming board members couldn't make a stronger commitment to saving money by using their own vehicles and claiming a mileage reimbursement, instead of requiring the state to provide vehicles - presumably, luxury vehicles - for their work. Board members are receiving a $145,000 annual salary, more than members of the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission, state Public Utility Commission and Liquor Control Board, all of whom have a similar car deal.

The gaming board's vehicle decision comes at a time when state property owners are becoming increasingly skeptical - justifiably so - about the benefits they will derive under the state's slot-machines law. Owners of property already know that the "tax reform" promised under the slots law isn't going to be as generous as they initially believed, but the ongoing nibbling at the anticipated gambling revenue from many directions is eroding the property tax benefit even more.

"This is just another example of how, more and more, the taxpayers will be an afterthought in all of this supposedly new revenue coming into the state," said Matt Brouillette, president of the Commonwealth Foundation.

Unfortunately, on the basis of the "hundreds of dollars," rather than thousands of dollars, tax benefit that is shaping up for property owners, owners of property appear to have been an afterthought in the slots bill picture from about the get-go.

Members of the gaming control panel are charged with awarding the Keystone State's 14 newly authorized slot parlor licenses and overseeing operations once those parlors are open.

It won't be an easy job, but board members are being paid at a rate significantly above the average pay of most state residents. A hardship would not have been accorded them, had they opted simply for mileage pay without a state vehicle.

In his story, the Harrisburg reporter said "the first winners from slot-machine gambling in Pennsylvania may be the people who are responsible for regulating it."

Fortunately for them, but unfortunately for state property owners, the board members in question didn't have to insert even one quarter into a slot machine to cash in on the "jackpot" in question.

That's the kind of "luck" most slots gamblers won't have the opportunity to experience, despite emptying many containers of quarters or other coins while trying to cash in on a slots bonanza.