Licensees must engage in the public conversation
Pub Date: 9/1/2008
By Ronda Wiggers, Lobbyist
Montana Coin Machine Operators Assoc.
As I drove home from the Gaming Advisory Council meeting in Kalispell last week, the radio talk host was chatting about the need for open space in the Flathead Valley because, he said, they are quickly running out of areas accessible to the public.
He chattered on for some time about the pending local ballot issue with no one offering to question his facts. I was confused. Sure enough, when I got home and checked the map 80 percent of Flathead County is still public land nothing had changed since the last time I had looked.
It s all about perception. And, in Montana, where many of our businesses only operate with a social license to do so, it s about public perception.
As a group, this adult beverage and gaming business does a wonderful job of supporting their communities everything from baseball teams to benefit fundraisers when someone is sick. The public is watching.
Recently, while working with other football parents on plans for the season, I found it interesting how many people offered that they knew a bar owner that would help us out with that . I am not sure if every bar owner in Cascade county is truly that generous. However, the perception is that they are.
Perception and reality are not always the same. If something is repeated often enough, without anyone offering a differing opinion, we begin to believe it is true. In a state with a true citizen s legislature and an easily accessible initiative process, we have to be cognizant of this and vigilant, too.
A friend picked me up for lunch this week. She had two other passengers that I had never met before. While driving down 10th Avenue South in Great Falls, someone asked what was being built at a new construction site. Without hesitation one woman offered, Probably another casino, that s all we seem to build. I started to explain the quota system (we have a de facto cap on the number of licensed gaming establisments allowed in the state) and signage and zoning issues, but then thought it didn t seem appropriate.
Thinking back on that, I was wrong. I should have taken the opportunity to correct a negative, and incorrect, public perception that is not based on fact. Someday someone may put a petition in front of her and ask for her signature'; it would have been better if she knew the actual facts.
And truly, all any of us know is what we have been exposed to our perception of the world around us. We make all of our decisions based on our own personal version of what we perceive to be fact.
Come January, 150 people will gather in Helena and begin the process of putting their perceptions, and those of their constituents, into the form of legislation.
So this leads me to my challenge to each of you:
Next time you are out and about and hear something negative and untrue about the hospitality business, rather than wince while those that know what you do for a living squirm uncomfortably, politely offer a few facts. Remember, people s perceptions are based only on the things they have been exposed to.
It is easy to shell out a few dollars for those Girl Scout cookies. It s much tougher to politely insert yourself into the conversation at the barber shop when the guy in the chair next to you is "explaining" how the license quota system is denying us some nationally franchised restaurant in our community.
Engaging is tougher. But it is truly important.
The public is watching.
Source: The Montana Tavern Times, September, 2008, published monthly by Continental Communications, 125 W. Granite St., Suite 102, Butte, MT 59701.