For two years, House Republicans, including Rep. Ron Marsico of Dauphin County, have been insisting on changes in the 2004 law that authorizes 14 slots casinos in Pennsylvania.

Now they're getting help from Mr. Marsico's cousin, Dauphin County District Attorney Edward Marsico, who wrote to Gov. Ed Rendell and legislative leaders last week urging them to correct what he sees as weaknesses in the law.

Both Marsicos want the Legislature to revise the way that the financial and criminal backgrounds of casino license applicants are investigated. Such investigatory power should be removed from the Bureau of Investigations and Enforcement, an arm of the state Gaming Control Board, they said, and given to "a real law enforcement agency," either the state police or the attorney general.

Doing so, they said, would allow state investigators to have full access to a casino applicant's criminal history, data that gaming board officials aren't allowed to see. This inability to see such data, said Ron Marsico, "has cast a cloud of Pennsylvania's fledgling gaming industry."

Last week, Edward Marsico dropped perjury charges that he'd filed against Poconos casino owner Louis DeNaples over a year ago. One reason, he said, was the "linguistically imprecise" way that state gaming officials asked Mr. DeNaples questions. The district attorney said that the poor questioning would have made it hard to secure a perjury conviction.