Could there be anything more bizarre than the legislative history of the gambling game known as keno?

In five years, keno, sometimes known as convenience gambling because it’s so quick and easy, has been considered the last legislative refuge for governors and legislators unable to create a budget. The first proposals to legalize keno in 2009 and 2010 went nowhere in a Democratic legislature but in 2013, a Democratic legislature legalized it. The next year, a Democratic legislature repealed keno and in 2015, made it legal again. That’s a 2-2 tie for against keno if you’re keeping score with a straight face.

The on again, off again romance with keno began when the deficit-challenged Republican governor M. Jodi Rell twice tried to enshrine the game as a revenue raiser but was thwarted by the majority Democrats on — don’t laugh — moral grounds. The Senate’s then president, Donald Williams, called the bingo-type game “a misery tax” imposed by a desperate governor upon people who could ill afford to play the game.

But in 2013, the deficit-challenged Democratic governor Dannel P. Malloy, with the support of his party’s legislative majority, did exactly what they had found so repugnant two years earlier and keno was established in the state over the objections of the Republicans, whose turn it was to be morally offended. The same Senator Williams supported the misery tax that time but said he still didn’t like it. Like most legislative crimes against the public, it was all done in secret and at the last minute.

Then, in 2014, facing increased public opposition to keno and a rare surplus, which was more important, Democrats dumped keno, but not until the state lottery had spent $50,000 to begin adding 600 keno stations to lottery outlets around the state.

Keno is a speedier, electronic version of bingo and is favored by gambling hosts for its long odds and fat contributions to the house. Players pick 20 numbers between 1 and 80 and the payoff is based on how many of the numbers are correct. The odds of picking 20 numbers are said to be 3.5 quintillion to one, which means no one in the history of humankind has ever pulled it off. But it’s a simple game, requiring no skills.

As far as we can tell, Malloy didn’t address the question of keno before he was governor, then, as governor, he was for it, then he was against it and now he finds it in the budget he says isn’t his but that he will sign − after adjustments − leaving him somewhat for it and somewhat against it. 

This isn’t the first example of Malloy’s keno flexibility. Last year, facing re-election and polls that indicated the public strongly opposed the expansion of gambling via keno, the 2014 edition of Malloy announced it wasn’t his idea to bring keno to the state the previous year even though he signed the bill. He then signed legislation to repeal it. He did.

We wouldn’t hazard a guess about keno’s future, given this history and the players in this farce. After the budget is signed, the state still has to negotiate a deal with the casinos that hold a keno monopoly under their original arrangement and the casinos, looking to expand, are expected to cooperate.

So for now, keno is back, a shaky monument to inconsistency and incompetence. May it have another short life.