Earth Stands Still As Atlantic City Casinos Close

The chips were down - literally - Wednesday in Atlantic City when the gambling magnet's dozen casinos closed after Governor Jon Corzine and state legislators could not agree on how to plug a $4.5 billion budget gap. The result is an unprecedented shutdown of state services that began Saturday and widened to include casinos, where state regulators are stationed to audit gambling's round-the-clock financial transactions.

The casinos were empty for the first time since 1978. That's when legalized gambling came to Atlantic City in an eleventh-hour attempt to revive a rapidly deteriorating resort town world famous as the setting for Monopoly, the real estate-trading board game.

The battle between Corzine and state lawmakers over taxes to balance the budget is not a partisan fight: Democrats control the Legislature, and Corzine is a Democrat.

While Atlantic City's slot machines sat silent, would-be gamblers were making plenty of noise about their disrupted vacations plans.

Tourists wandered aimlessly past slot machines cordoned off by yellow tape. Poker terminals read "out of service." Security guards posted throughout the casinos kept bystanders moving. Signs apologized for the inconvenience. "We will resume casino operations as soon as a NJ state budget resolution is reached," they blared.

Corzine said his proposal to raise the state sales tax from 6% to 7% is the fairest way to fix years of fiscal mismanagement that have left New Jersey as one of the few states "in a massive sea of red ink."