Bratislava mayor digs himself a budget hole

In Slovakia, city council members in Bratislava approved a complete ban on casinos in the capital with a generally binding regulation (VZN) set to come into effect at the beginning of May according to The Slovak Spectator.

After their licences expire, casinos and gambling parlours can no longer be housed in hotels, blocks of flats, shopping centres, community houses or in spaces for public entertainment.

“It will not work in such a way that we will wake up tomorrow and all the gambling venues will be closed but we finally have an instrument to begin pushing them away,” Bratislava’s mayor Ivo Nesrovnal reportedly stated following last month’s vote.

The ban will also make a hole in Bratislava’s budget. During the last few years the city has received more than E3m each year from this source.

Nesrovnal does not know from where the revenue to fill the gap will come from but he apparently does not see this as a problem. “This was not a vote about money but about values,” said the optimistic mayor.