HARRISBURG -- Many General Assembly Republicans have never really liked the idea of bringing slot machines to Pennsylvania, but they've accepted the fact that the gambling devices are here to stay.

Which is not to say that the state's regulation of the one-armed bandits couldn't be toughened, Sen. Jeffrey Piccola, R-Dauphin, and state Rep. Doug Reichley, R-Lehigh, said yesterday.

Flanked by a dozen of their Republican colleagues, the two legislators introduced bills to make numerous changes to Act 71 of 2004, which authorized up to 14 slots parlors around the state.

The legislators are upset that the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board, on Dec. 20, 2006, issued a slots license to northeastern Pennsylvania businessman Louis DeNaples. He then built the $400 million Mount Airy Casino Resort in Monroe County, which opened in October.

The board was embarrassed in January, when the Dauphin County district attorney filed four counts of perjury against Mr. DeNaples, stemming from testimony during his license application process.

Mr. Piccola said that "inadequacies in our gaming law prevented a thorough background check [of Mr. DeNaples] before a license was awarded to [the] Mount Airy casino owner, who was later charged with lying about his connections to organized crime figures.

"If we do not correct [the 2004 law], we are hanging out a sign telling organized crime: Welcome, open for business, Pennsylvania."

Mr. DeNaples, through spokesmen, has strongly denied the perjury charges and said he doesn't have any connections to organized crime figures.

But Republicans are introducing two identical bills, House Bill 2410 and Senate Bill 1331, to amend the licensing process by:

• Reducing the size of the gaming control board from the current seven members to five, with all five members selected by the governor but confirmed by the Senate in open hearings. Currently the members are appointed by the governor and legislative leaders but not subject to confirmation.

• Eliminating the current "qualified majority" requirement for awarding licenses. Now, at least five of the seven board members must approve a license, including all four of the members named by General Assembly leaders, plus at least one of the three members named by the governor.

Under the GOP plan, at least three of the five members on the revamped board would be required to approve any new slots license.

The current "five out of seven" gives each legislative leader a "veto power" over every license, critics have said. Gov. Ed Rendell, a Democrat and slots supporter, last week also proposed doing away with the "supermajority" requirement of five votes, but he proposed to leave the number of board members at seven.

The current board has issued 11 of the 14 slots licenses allowed by the 2004 law. The Republican measure doesn't call for those 11 licenses to be re-issued if the board size is changed. But each slots license has to come up for re-approval each year, and the newly constituted board could vote on that, as well as voting for the first time on the seventh and final racetrack/gaming license for Lawrence County and the two resort hotel slots licenses to be awarded in Eastern Pennsylvania.

Rendell aide Chuck Ardo said the governor is working with another Republican senator, Jane Earll of Erie, who is creating a task force to improve the slots law.

"He looks forward to the task force's vetting of those [changes] along with those made by the legislators to find ways to improve the current system," Mr. Ardo said.

Others pointed out one potentially huge negative consequence of the Piccola/Reichley plan -- the state could lose up to $550 million. Why? Because Section 1209 of the 2004 slots law requires the state to refund each applicant's $50 million license fee if the gaming board makeup is changed within five years after the licenses are granted.

In other matters, the Republicans also want to:

• Prevent any slots applicant who has ever had a felony conviction from getting a license. The current law, passed in 2004, says an applicant can't have committed a felony in the past 15 years. This provision allowed the board to give a slots license to Mr. DeNaples, who had a federal conviction in 1978.

• Prevent any gaming board member from having any outside employment. A couple of the current or past board members did keep their outside jobs even though the annual salary for a board member is $145,000.

• Shift the Bureau of Investigation and Enforcement away from the gaming board and put it under the attorney general. Mr. Piccola wants to create a new division under Attorney General Tom Corbett, which would contain the gambling investigators.

There has been friction in recent years between the gaming board's investigators and state police, which aren't under the board, over who should conduct some of the background checks.

• Permit the General Assembly to allocate annual expenses to the state police section that does slots background checks. Currently, the gaming board makes those decisions.

• Require any slots license applicant to ask federal authorities for any data collected on them contained in a Freedom of Information Act file, and then require the applicant to turn that file over to the new Division of Gaming Enforcement. The current gaming board hadn't seen Mr. DeNaples file when it gave him a license in December 2006.