In an effort to protect municipalities concerned about negative impacts from a bill to expand gaming in the Commonwealth, I filed amendments yesterday with the Senate Clerk’s Office to strengthen safeguards and provide additional protections for surrounding communities.
The legislature has debated and voted on expanded gambling in Massachusetts for several years now, and this year it looks closer to becoming a reality than ever before. Throughout this entire process, my main priority has always been to protect and support my district’s residents, communities, neighborhoods, and local businesses. I have filed these amendments to make sure the needs of surrounding communities – across the Commonwealth – are better addressed and understood so we can have the best possible outcome for our towns, our residents, and the state as a whole.
The bill being considered by the Senate does contain some protections for communities that find themselves impacted by another community’s choice to host a gambling facility. In fact, I fought very hard to achieve these protections because I feel that all surrounding communities deserve to have a strong voice in this process.
After hearing from and discussing this issue with many constituents, local officials, organizations, and residents from all over the state, I submitted amendments to strengthen these community safeguards and ensure that surrounding communities and the public are involved in the entire process.
Some highlights of these amendments include:
- Changing the definition of “surrounding communities” to ensure fairness to all impacted communities and to give them a seat at the table during the process;
- Giving surrounding communities and substantially impacted communities the ability to vote – not just host communities;
- Ensuring public sentiment is taken into consideration by requiring the Gaming Commission to consider the public support or opposition in the host and surrounding communities;
- Increasing surrounding community involvement in the long term mitigation process by allowing each Local Community Mitigation Advisory Committee to appoint one member to the Subcommittee on Community Mitigation – which currently only has representatives from the host communities;
- Increasing fairness to cities and towns when negotiating with a casino by requiring the applicant to pay for legal or financial costs incurred by municipalities during the negotiation process;
- Requiring the Gaming Commission to consider how to prevent concentration of gaming establishments in a particular area when awarding a license for a region
Advocating for the residents of Massachusetts and working to further strengthen our communities is the reason I get up in the morning and these amendments were submitted with the needs and concerns of our communities with me foremost in my mind.
It continues to be an honor and a privilege to represent the 2nd Middlesex and Norfolk District and to be a part of the Massachusetts Legislature. And I believe that these amendments to ensure our communities have a voice, a vote, and the ability to directly participate in the process will help the Commonwealth remain the strong, connected, and community-focused state it is known to be.
I am placing a bet now that if Casinos are made legal in Massachusetts, in ten years, all will see that:
1. There is no net gain in revenue.
2. There is no net gain in jobs.
3. The list of local businesses forced to close due to cannibalization (such as theaters like the Hanover in Worcester or the Regent in Arlington) will be long and tragic.
4. Every year, casino jobs will degrade. As Casino revenue goes down, the wages and benefits will go down, and these jobs will “Hyatize”.
That way, when the casinos fold, the workers will have skills for the open marketplace.
1. The same money spent on repairing and expanding public higher education would put those trade union workers to work – but truly build up our state and make taxpayers, not broke and bankrupt addicts.
2. The same money spent on having a competitive infrastructure would put trade union workers to work – and make our state attractive to business.
3. Just who is pitching this at LIUNA and the AFL/CIO as the answer to the depression in the construction trades? My inquiring mind wants to know who is spending big.
I am betting each Casino/expanded gambling supporter I talk to that in 10 years:
1. 1. There will not have been any increased revenue over what the lottery brings in.
2. There will not be a net increase in jobs after the destruction and cannibalization of local businesses.
3. Total number of bankruptcies and C & P cases will have gone up.
4. Casino jobs will pay less and less each year as the Casino business is in decline and their revenues will go down, not up.
5. The states GNP will go down each year once Casinos are in operation as profits will be shipped across state lines to absentee owners.
Who wants to hold the bet for the next decade?
I really don’t understand this logic. Yes, gambling is addictive and gambling addiction ruins lives, and casinos make their money off creating addicts. But you know what? The same can be said of booze, in fact alcohol is worse than gambling in some fairly key ways. (Gambling doesn’t destroy your liver, for instance.) But should we ban liquor? Of course not. Banning alcohol was tried and caused quite a lot of suffering. There are an awful lot of people capable of drinking alcohol responsibly and preventing them from being able to do so causes much unhappiness and causes people to go around the law. Similarly, the war on drugs has had fairly dubious results. The solution is not to ban addictive things, the solution is to impose additional taxes and regulations on them and then use the money to counter the social harm of addiction.
The ultimate goal of a just society is to allow people to have pleasurable lives. People find casino gambling to be pleasurable, so that in of itself is a major argument in favor of legalizing it, even if not a single job was created. It’s weird that both sides seem to only care about the economic argument for casinos. It’s a basic edict of liberalism that people should be able to have fun in the way they like having fun.
Exploding Myths: Alcohol
Take a look at this:
The Smartest Guys Not in the Room
…but if people were as risk-averse to alcohol as some seem to be regarding casinos then we might as well return to Prohibition. I don’t really care about who owns the distribution or uses the product and who doesn’t. Point is both gambling and alcohol carry with them the potential for great abuse and disasterous consequences.
I wasn’t really trying to make a specific comparison with alcohol, it’s just an obvious example to use. I mentioned the war on drugs too after all. Cocaine would have to be regulated more tightly than alcohol, but some amount of decriminalization could be a good idea. Plus, I’m neither an experienced gambler nor an experienced drinker, but using the example of “sipping wine” seems to significantly downplay the dangers of alcoholism. There are tons of people who can just sip on wine, and there are tons of people who go down to Foxwoods, play the slots for a bit, then get bored and hit the buffet. But for the people who can’t just sip on a bit of wine, it’s a radically different experience.
Plus, casino owners are richer than bar owners because there are radically different economies of scale, not because casino gambling is uniquely good at ripping money out of people’s pockets. With casinos you have giant buildings set up to gambling more enticing. The bigger a casino is, the flashier you can make it, the more people you can attract, the more money you can sucker out of them. With bars, bigger isn’t really better, and you want a relatively small place so people can socialize. And because of all that economies of scale, the casino industry is prone to oligopoly, so the industry isn’t very competitive. (In a truly efficient marketplace, casinos wouldn’t be able to make all that much money since casinos with better odds would outcompete them until casinos made just barely enough money to cover their costs.) All of these are real problems of course, but that’s casinos should be highly regulated.
And honestly, all capitalism is casino capitalism. Capitalism is all about people putting money in risky ventures, and any developed economy is going to have intermediaries who try to sell investors to put their money on certain “bets,” and they’re going to use whatever tools available to make those bets look flashy. If anything, it seems unfair to ban casinos if you’re going to allow capitalism to exist. Of course, we regulate capitalism to make it less casino-y, but that’s why actual casinos should also be regulated.
Had to sign up just to protest this idiocy. Even the link you provided shows that some, like Sheldon Adelson gamble.
The people who built Vegas and Reno were almost all gamblers. Bob Stupak and many other owners were/are degenerate gamblers. You can STILL find 90 year old Jackie Gaughn gambling at the poker tables at his El Cortez, amongst the many owners who spend hours at the poker tables.
The man who started Ceasers Palace, Jay Sarno, died at a craps table. Still a millionaire despite being a degenerate gambler.
Dealers and other casino employees are often the best customers.
I’m sure you don’t know it but with a little study you can play video poker or blackjack just about “even” with the house plus enjoy a couple of free drinks and a nice meal. All the while enjoying the casino atmosphere.
Some people like protesting Darfour and worrying about how others spend their money. Some of us don’t give a f*** about Darfour or Troy Davis (guilty as hell by the way) and just want to enjoy our life while we are able and not have to go to Maine, CT or RI to spend our money.
Get a life and keep your hands of ours.
This fight is over. The fat lady is singing. You lose
We do ‘ban’ alcohol, totally and comprehensively for people under 21, less comprehensivily for adults. You are banned from performing certain activities while you are “under the influence”, namely cars, trucks, heavy machinery and your job. You are banned from drinking it in public and you are banned from selling it without a license.
It’s lipstick on a boar, not a sweet, fresh pig.
A sweet, fresh suckling pig packed with brown (fetal?) fat is what Spaniards roast. Now-independent former colonies often roast older pigs. Boston Democrats roasted a pig this month, a heavy one, not a sweet, fresh suckling.
It’s not enough for a pig to be sweet. It has got to present with crispy skin. In the Philippines, we have the special sweet Mang Tomas sauce, though, to go with the roasted pork. Anyway, a pig roast is a safer bet than a casino. Foxwoods and Vegas casinos have had to offer rooms for cheap, and it ends up not so much a sweat deal for well-meaning modest folk, but letting the dogs out that pack into a cheap room without even patronizing the casino restaurants (not even the value buffets).
Third-world countries may have top-rate hotels, too. What fixates them as being third-world is not that don’t have enough fancy carpets, marble floors, chandeliers, ballrooms and air-conditioning, but that they don’t invest in research and development for science facilities. Cutting back on NASA programs and resorting to casinos will make our country not innovative and not head and shoulders above any ordinary country which glamorizes vice.
Listen up, the plane has taken off the runway – the House passed the bill and the Senate has the votes to pass it.
So, instead of complaining about it and pontificating about how we would do things – we should be thanking the Senators and Representatives who have the backbone to file these amendments to try to protect their towns and their residents.
We’re getting casinos. Am I thrilled? No way. But I am glad that there are some people in elected office who take the time to try to ensure our communities get the best protection. At this point, that’s all we can do – these are the people we should be supporting, not condemning.
Wow, that’s the spirit that made this country great.
While I understand what you say when you talk about the “spirit” of it, I was only trying to make the point that I am not thrilled about casinos but, like Senator Spilka writes in her post, this has been debated for years and this is the year those who are advocating for casinos have enough votes to get it through the Legislature. It’s going to happen. I’m just glad some people are willing to see that instead of just pontificating about how they are against expanded gaming, they need to be working to get restrictions and protections in the bill.
we should give up the fight against expanded gambling for 4 1/2 years. Literally, at the first meeting I went to about a Middleboro casino in the Spring of 2007, they were saying ‘give up’ it’s a ‘done deal’. People who say this do the gambling industry’s job for them.
I’ve watched or listened to all the debates. Have you? There is still an egregious ignorance of facts.
And I have hardly been pontificating. I’ve been trying to educate citizens and legislators since day one.
And I’m only a small part of a state-wide nation-wide network.
Where do you think Senator Spilka and others get the information for their amendments? There would be a pitiful amount of ‘protections’ and ‘restrictions’ in any gambling bill had the anti-casino movement not been there every step of the way educating both the public and the legislature. We’ve also acted as the watchdog of the gambling industry and the people who love them.
It’s not helpful to disparage activists who’ve given their hearts and souls in myriad legitimate ways for years just trying to get elected officials to their job in a half-hearted way.
This is a colossal failure by the governor and the Legislature. I appreciate Senator Spilka taking steps to improve it, and posting here, but “Listen up, this is done” lets the General Court off the hook far too easily. There is still no rush, after FOUR YEARS of discussing this.
Thank you for standing up to make sure that if this bill passes it will at least have protections for communities in it. I don’t want gambling either, but as bridgetdreyfus says above, this is going to happen. Let’s do it right, with protections for all.
There is no way to this “right”. There is no way to offer “protections for all”.
This is the WRONG thing to do. It is AWFUL social policy. It is AWFUL fiscal policy. It is AWFUL for the towns in which these facilities are built, and AWFUL for the rest of us who will pay the price.
I think its time to be VERY VOCAL about naming names and kicking butt. I want to know the NAME of each representative that voted against legalizing this scourge last time and voted for it today. I want each of those representatives to have to stand up and answer questions about WHAT CHANGED THEIR VOTE. I want to know who contributed to those representatives, and when. I want those questions asked by the press, by individual voters, and by the US attorney’s office (because we all know that Martha Coakley won’t touch this with a ten-foot pole).
I want Deval Patrick to have to answer the same questions. I haven’t read the details of what locations this contorted monstrosity of a bill allows, but I’m pretty sure that Milton is not on the list. I think Milton needs a nice big fat bright 24-hour casino and slots parlor, about three blocks away from the Patrick residence. Somehow I have the idea that he would sing a different tune if that was part of this package.
I want the individual politicians who are foisting this on us to be held PERSONALLY politically responsible. I want to make support for predatory gambling political poison.
…by calling for questions from the US Attorney’s office? There are all kinds of reasons for casting or changing a vote, some more politically legitimate than others. However, the act of casting a vote cannot be evidence of criminal activity. There is a long tradition in free societies that legislators are immune from prosecution for what they say and how they vote, as the federal constitution puts it that “they shall not be questioned in any other place.”
As for Milton I’m pretty sure it is in that magical 50 mile radius people like to cite of either Suffolk Downs or a southeast site.
I am suggesting that corporate interests have a long history of applying pressure, legal and illegal, to change votes. Of course I’m not suggesting that the vote itself is evidence.
I am, however, suggesting that the gambling industry has a long history of illegally influencing the political process. I’m outright stating that the Massachusetts legislature (along with the Menino machine) is corrupt, and that Martha Coakley has a history of doing as little as possible to address that corruption.
I’m suggesting that, in the interest of not “boiling the ocean”, investigating the activities of legislators whose votes have changed is rather more likely to reveal illegal efforts of the gambling industry than investigating the activities of those who have not.
I am outright stating that this decision to legalize gambling positively reeks of corruption, and I think I’m not the only one to react this way. I hope this clarifies what I think about the role of local and federal investigatory agencies in this travesty of the political process.
…and debate their hearts out trying to defeat gambling bills.
Some senators file amendments.
My senator tries to stop public meetings and install slot machines at the airport.
Thank you for your efforts. I think your efforts to mitigate the coming reality should be rewarded. I heartily applaud each and every one of your listed proposals. The perfect (no casinos whatsoever) must not become the enemy of the… well, not good, but better than it otherwise might be (the reality which we can attempt to temper…)
Might I suggest one more amendment? (If, in fact, somebody hasn’t already thought of it…) I would suggest a clear, well-publicized, and absolute prohibition on the sale of alcohol at all casinos.
The effect of a ban on alcohol would be, relatively, salutary: the actual act of calculating odds, as well as the judgement necessary to either quit while ahead or stop rather than chase loss, is easier attempted in sobriety. Further, it seems to me, a ban on alcohol might have the added effect of decreasing the attraction to the addictive personality. The admixture of alcohol and gambling, it seems to me, would be an invitation to poor judgement, impulsive risk-taking and much regret.
Driving under the influence is a clear crime. Gambling under the influence is likewise a crime, one that might not directly produce fatalities, but that nonetheless can ruin lives with equal ferocity. I would wish that any such amendment put forth under these terms would be used to underline this point most vociferously.
Politically, such an amendment would have the effect of separating the “sheep from the goats,’ clearly identifying those who truly wish to help people and their communities from those amoral politicians currently enjoying their stay in the pockets of the casino builders.
…they want to allow smoking, too! Screw the restaurants and VFW’s, but if WE might lose income, well – THAT is a horse of a different color!
They want casino employees to be ‘essential state workers’, too.
Read the bill on Instatrac. I did, and haven’t stopped retching yet.
Sorry, guys! Read the amendments.
This is a group that can’t walk and chew gum at the same time and brought you The Big Dig that continues to pay dividends.
When lawmakers have refused to conduct an INDEPENDENT COST ANALYSIS, they don’t even know what this will cost (because they really know you’ll get screwed).
Has this affected your family directly? That’s the only reason I can come up with that your position is not only disagreement, but comes across as so angry and hostile. Ditto for Gladys Kravitz.
community, most of us knew nothing about Gambling. That’s what the Industry counts on – your ignorance.
Our household has never even purchased a scratch ticket.
(We know the odds and if we want to support local government, we write a check to the Friends of the Library or other organization.)
There were many in Middleboro who at first thought the Mega Slot Barn might be a good idea. They retained an open mind and considered the evidence and continued to research, unlike your position.
In the course of this journey, I have met GAMBLING ADDICTS. I have listened to their tales and read about their downward spirals.
They were law-abiding taxpayers who unwittingly fell into a trap that had been set for them by a Predatory Industry. That’s what the Industry counts on – the PREY.
You continue to post uninformed arguments because you’re too lazy to conduct any research of your own, but you keep posting the same arguments anyway. Argue substance, Christopher. What community has prospered 5 years after a Slot Barns has opened? Find one.
This isn’t an argument about Gambling.
This is a discussion about the Common Wealth – you know – dedicated to the COMMON WEALTH of all of its residents, supporting and partnering with an Industry that only profits when it creates ADDICTION and preys upon its weakest and most vulnerable.
This isn’t about jobs because there will be few.
(And a number of us have refuted those phony numbers that are continually tossed around.)
(And promoting SLOTS at Logan will create what?)
This isn’t about revenues because they’re overstated.
(And a number of us have refuted those phony numbers as well.)
This is about a regressive tax and poor fiscal policy and excuses.
This is about weak politicians who willingly follow like sheep and maybe we can excuse that they’re gullible.
This is about leaders who fail to lead.
This is about ignoring + 300,000 Massachusetts residents who are being tossed under the bus simply because they’re ‘DISPOSABLE.’
Christopher, setting aside all other arguments, I would recommend that you read the legislation because clearly, you have not even gone that far. It’s conspicuously flawed.
When lawmakers REFUSE to conduct an INDEPENDENT COST ANALYSIS, rest assured, they’re hiding something. That’s the true cost to taxpayers.
…that I could charatibly describe as questionable about the legislation, and maybe I would come out against it as I ultimately did last time around. However, Sen. Spilka is doing exactly what a conscientious legislator should be doing by offering amendments designed to reduce the harmful effects.
Go to Connecticut and RI. See the Mass. plates. See the buses coming from Mass. See the billions fly away. That’s money you Lefties can use to prop up the teacher unions and other public payroll bandits for a few more years-until the pensions and health care and illegal aliens finally collapse the state.
The debate is over. Next week you lose.
That’s just what empathy is. The ability to identify with people other than yourself. I believe this post was not hostile, but actually very heartfelt, and instead of seeing it for what it was, as usual, you found a way to reduce it to how little you can feel for those who may be negatively effected by casinos.
We keep hearing about how casinos will give jobs, especially good construction jobs.
If the unions are so concerned about their people going to work, why don’t they send people into the cities and towns devastated by the tornado on June 1? There must be thousands of construction jobs available!