It’s dubious enough that Spokane County commissioners are talking of lowering the county gambling tax, hoping it will entice cardrooms to move across city limits. What’s worse, Spokane city officials are thinking of responding in kind to keep them put.

That’s all the area needs, an intergovernmental tug-of-war over businesses that are already here. That energy should be reserved for recruiting businesses here from other locales, or helping local entrepreneurs launch new ventures.

Yet the commissioners have scheduled a hearing on Aug. 2 to get public reaction to the idea of lowering the tax on cardrooms, from 15 percent of their gross gambling revenues to 5 percent.

Why such generosity to the poker and blackjack set? The only establishment that would be affected – for now – is Aces Casino, which just moved to a northside location in an unincorporated portion of the county. It previously was on East Sprague in the city of Spokane Valley, where the tax is 10 percent. The owner appears to have been studying county commissioners’ eyes.

From the county’s perspective, the calculation is that other cardroom operators will follow suit. Fearful of just such an outcome, Spokane city officials are watching the county and could respond by reducing their own 20 percent tax. Spokane Valley, to its credit, is standing pat. So far.

The stakes aren’t trivial. The city of Spokane collects $1.4 million a year in gambling taxes and every time the rate changes by 5 percent, it makes a $350,000 impact on the city treasury. It’s a city, by the way, that is having trouble paying for priority public-safety services.

For some people, gambling is a destructive, dysfunctional manifestation of their desperation. It can torment lives and destroy families. For many others, though, it is a harmless recreational preference, like golf or yard sales.

And while there is reason to be concerned about the adverse social consequences suffered by some gamblers and their families, there’s no point in getting moralistic. Gambling is here, big time, in the form of several readily accessible, tribal casinos in the area.

In fact, some advocates say the county and its cities should reduce their gambling taxes precisely to offset the advantages that tribal casinos and charitable gambling operations now enjoy in the competition for gamblers.

That may not be such a good idea. The status that gives an edge to tribes and charities is justified by the socioeconomic and public-service concerns they address.

Meanwhile, city and county officials seem eager to tempt existing businesses to chase a few percentage points of tax-rate differential back and forth across the artificial boundary lines that divide political jurisdictions.

The citizens and constituents who work at and patronize those businesses – and who shop, work and play throughout the region they see as one – would benefit more from an infusion of new business than a perpetual rearrangement of existing ones.