The big payout

Two cents of every dollar fed into a slot machine at Hollywood Casino at Penn National Race Course flows into Dauphin County coffers.

Over the years, that money — along with 1% of the casino’s online gambling revenue — has snowballed into a jackpot of more than a quarter of a billion dollars that the county is supposed to use to address public needs. Half of the money is unrestricted, meaning the county can use it for almost anything, but the other half must be used for grants, many of which help build new firehouses, repair roads and support nonprofits like food pantries and the YMCA.

The county has also used millions of dollars in casino revenue to fund nearly 100 grants to private businesses. Some of those grants have been given to businesses with direct connections to the county’s power players — including those who decide where the money goes.

The 2004 law that allowed gambling in Pennsylvania requires Hollywood Casino at Penn National Race Course to provide a cut of gambling proceeds to Dauphin County every year. Oct. 2, 2025. Photo by Dan Gleiter

Some for-profits used the grants to offset business costs, like buying an underwater treadmill or drone equipment, while funding requests to the county from police departments, municipalities and nonprofits were underfunded or rejected.

And some businesses put the grants toward initiatives they say provide a public benefit, such as major economic development projects or free services for disadvantaged groups.

Other projects that received grants years ago still have not materialized.

Government watchdogs, nonprofit leaders and some public officials have been sounding the alarm on the grant process for years. The county recently implemented some reforms — but outside experts, county leaders and advocates think an even bigger overhaul is needed to ensure public dollars are well spent.

Without clearer rules in place limiting who is eligible to apply or requiring follow-up mechanisms like audits, the program could revert to its old ways at any point.

“This is a wildly — a poorly designed program,” said Nate Jensen, a professor at the University of Texas-Austin and a government incentives expert. “That even if there isn’t nefarious giving of grants, the fact that basically any project can be eligible, and it’s not clear what honest criteria they’re using, makes it look pretty bad.”