This just in from Boston.com
House Speaker Salvatore F. DiMasi, in a startling departure from previous stances against resort gambling, today decided for the first time to back a November ballot question asking voters whether they support casinos in Massachusetts.
It looks like DiMasi was feeling the heat and decided to get out of the kitchen. Could the November ballot get any more crowded?
For a decent summary of gambling ballot measures that have taken place in other states, prepared by the National Institute on Money in State Politics, see “High Stakes Gambling Ballot Measures 2006.” The bad news is it looks like there will be lots of money spent; the good news is, at least in other states, ballot initiatives have failed.
Please share widely!
Amidst the maneuvering to defeat the governor’s proposal, I recall DiMasi promising certain things would come up for a vote (and certain defeat) in the legislature. But I don’t remember a previous commitment regarding a rerendum.
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p>At any rate, I see Viser and/or the Globe are down with the “It’s not gambling, it’s gaming” thing:
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p>This thing keeps coming back.
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p>Deval, don’t feed your addiction to tax revenue with another addiction!
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the best way to make sure Massachusetts repeals the state income tax – and passes casinos. Yes, let’s offer citizens the fake choice between income taxes and casinos all on the same ballot. GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR
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p>Until DiMasi rights this ship, I take all my kind words for him back. FURIOUS!!
Good post Ryan. The fact is that many voters will support the income tax repeal because of the misinformation that will circulate about the potential value of casinos. (Others because they think the leg will not act on it anyway so why not tweak them a bit by voting against the income tax.) You could call this referendum idea…The Full Employment for Political Consultants and Lobbyists Act. Kudos to the Governor for opposing this idea.
Bob, that could be the least intelligent comment you’ve ever made on this site. You’re studying to get a PHd in history, right? Pray, tell, how well has direct democracy worked in human history? We have representative democracy for a reason. Let’s just put marriage on the ballot, too, right? Come on, Bob.
Your giant head picture wasn’t a joke, was it.
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p>Still, I’ll take your earnest observation as a compliment.
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p>As to democracy, direct or otherwise, I’m for it. In Massachusetts in particular, having observed our legislature more closely than I would have liked over the past few years here at BMG, I definitely would prefer a referendum vote as a general principle than the wisdom of the legislature.
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p>And incidentally, as I have said before, I think one casino in Massachusetts would be just fine. Why should we make people drive all the way to CT to gamble? The problem with Patrick’s plan, in my opinion, was that he wanted three casinos all at once.
Okay. Direct Democracy is wonderful. So Marriage Equality should have been on the ballot, right? Because you don’t like the “wisdom” of the legislature in stopping that. Really, enlighten us all with your logic on that one.
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p>PS The problem with your ‘one casino at a time’ plan is the fact that it can’t possibly, in a million years, actually exist. Once slots are legal in Mass in any way, shape or form, then tribal casinos can be opened via the federal process. There’s absolutely, positively no way to limit casinos in this state to one. There will be more than one. So, really, stop that meme because you’re just being naive if you think we could ever have just one casino.
Under the Constitution, we have a process for various kinds of popular initiatives. I happen to think that’s a good thing, but you can argue for more power for the legislators and less power for the voters if you like. Heck, argue for rule by the Council of Elrond if you like.
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p>In the case of marriage, I’m fine with the status quo. The Constitution was followed. The legislature decided not to put the matter to the voters. I do think that from a political point of view the right would be more solidly protected in Massachusetts if an amendment to make marriage equality unconstitutional had been put to the people and defeated. At the moment an argument can be made than a small group — lawyers and legislators — have foisted marriage equality on the Commonwealth. It’s not a particularly strong argument, but it is an argument, and it could be refuted by a successful pro-marriage state-wide vote. My ideal situation would be marriage equality protected by a constitutional amendment ratified the good citizens of the Commonwealth.
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p>As to casinos, one state-sponsored casino would have been better than three, that’s all I am saying.
What point is there to representative democracy if you have a public referendum on critical elements? What makes human rights a second class issue that requires the voters to weigh in directly? Should we have done that for integrating lunch counters? Or employment discrimination? Or housing?
In theory, representative democracy is terrible. It’s just that the alternatives are worse, to paraphrase famous words. As Rousseau pointed out, citizens of a democracy are slaves on every day except election day.
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p>It would be much better to get everyone together to debate and collectively decide every issue. We don’t live in an aristocracy, after all, where one small group makes decisions for everyone else, at least not in theory.
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p>As a practical matter, however, no one would be able to get much work done.
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p>Anyway, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it đŸ˜‰
I think, however, we’re approaching some technological milestones that might allow us, not direct participatory democracy, but more input. While I think the idea of a direct vote on every issue is, besides being unwieldy as you say, rather counterproductive.
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p> We have, now, several vectors of representation from the local to the state to the federal… Often these vectors can work against each other, as when somebody might vote for a fairly liberal local politician (say school board, or mayor) or not vote at all in the local election while voting for George Bush at the national level. While these votes don’t directly collide they can be in quite stark contrast. This is made more stark when people vote in a national election while ceding the franchise on local votes.
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p>There is also another vector of representation that technology can enable (it is enabled by proxy at this point) and that is taxation. We are, in effect, paying legislators to manage our tax monies. It’s just that simple. It would be a relatively trivial matter to enable representation via taxes by allowing taxpayers to apportion percentages of their taxation to specific priorities: for example, education, infrastructure, etc…. Instead of handing a blank check to legislators, it would be a means of providing guidelines for the spending. And, in fact, I think this would provide a fourth corner to the present system of ‘checks and balances’ we have in place as the legislature could define and control the categories against which the taxes may be apportioned. We do this now in a very trivial way by allowing taxpayers to apportion some funds to FEC coffers and other funding pools. I would expand this to fifty percent of taxes paid and allow a ‘tag’ to be applied for directing the funds. For example, a person paying 1,000 dollars in taxes could direct 500 of which to be paid out for education and education only. The rest would go into the ‘general fund’. We could do this at various levels allowing people to split their 50% in ways they deem appropriate: some to infrastructure, some to education, the rest to science grants, for example… Anybody signalling no preference would have their taxes default to the ‘general fund’ which would be taken from in the way that it is now. Nothing is lost.
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p>The technological aspects of this are two-fold: databases can parse the reporting to streamline the payout against the tags and information on specific functions can be returned to taxpayers in realtime. Information on available categories, containing such data as historical spending, future predictions and scope can be readily available and used for the purpose of deciding where to apportion taxes.
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p>The model of government we have is over two centuries old and is without contextual alignment with our abilities and insights. We’re on the verge of being able to view and review the entire government in realtime. (It’s probably likely that, absent historical data, most if it is out there, just not centralized) The process of decisionmaking could benefit from more direct input into priorities rather than the indirection we have now: namely that we don’t vote on decisions, we vote on decision makers. I don’t perceive us ever going completely away from this model (and why would we want to?) but I do perceive both the need and the growing ability to add direct input into decisions and priorities….
And find a way to have citizens vote online everytime ;).
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p>K
You’re 26 years old, you’ve been going to a four-year state college for eight years, you still haven’t gotten your degree, you live at home with your mother …
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p>Stop blogging, hit those books and finish your degree. Then you can go out and get a job, move out of your mom’s house, rent an apartment, and blog with some real-world experience — as an adult!
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My prediction is that casinos will be supported overwhelmingly in the Merrimack Valley.
In the Globe article it was referred to as an Advisory Question so it is not binding.
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p>BTW – whether it’s binding or not the Leg can change or amend it any way it sees fit after it has been voted on – like they did with the ballot initiative to lower the income tax to 5%
The pro casino force is strong with this state government….
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p>With Deval’s Vegas connections and thirst for money combined with the Speaker’s apparent Racino connections combined with the Speaker’s newfound confidence in the voters’ opinions, if gambling were legal here, I think I’d probably bet on casinos breaking ground in 2009
What the hell do we need/want casinos here in the Bay State for?
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p>Excuse me for not drinking the Kool-Aid folks–I ain’t buyin’ it.
Ladies and Genlemen. You may behold an entirely different Commonwealth of Massachusetts by next summer. Either we will be comfortably treading water or we will be a corpse.
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p>Between Simple Simon in the Corner Office and The Man Who Never Was in the House, they will doom us all aor attempt to. All in the name of good intentins of course. Wonder if the Leg will give back the magic wand so Deval can make himself a US Senator and exit stage left?
Secretary of Housing and Economic Development, Dan O’Connell, issued the following statement today in response to Speaker DiMasi’s statement on a November referendum on resort casinos:
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p>”We believe our focus should be on working together to enact the Clean Energy, Life Sciences, Oceans and several important bond bills by the end of this legislative session.
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p>Poll after poll has shown solid support for the Governor’s resort casino proposal. With all due respect to the Speaker, we feel that a non-binding referendum may not be the best course of action at this time. The House’s opposition to the proposal has settled the question for this legislative session.”
The Speaker did not say that he would initiate a referendum question on the ballot. He offered it as a compromise position if the Senate insisted on doing something on casinos during the budget debate. The Senate, taking up casinos today, decided to send the casino gambling question to a study, so the compromise is no longer relevant. In addition, even the most recent polling done by Clyde Barrow’s shop, doesn’t ask the most important question of all for any referendum consideration – would you want a casino in your community? This is one of the main reasons that major casino interests have not initiated a referendum drive in this state – because everyone’s answer is no.
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p>Furthermore – and I hope as a new poster, you’ll provide me a little leeway with the length of my comments – I’m highly disappointed that the Governor has decided to make this his keynote issue. They are continuing to pay $179,000 for a casino study by a firm associated with casino interests and have been fairly public about the fact that they’re filing this thing again next session. For someone that came to power by calling upon citizens to “check back in”, with particular emphasis on minority, disenfranchised, and low income residents, it’s amazing to me that the keynote issue of the Patrick Administration is one that targets the very constituency that put him in office. Why do you think he backed off putting a casino in Boston during the debate in the House? As a progressive thinker, I’m more than a little put off by the Governor’s stance on this. It is, to use a Deval campaign slogan, a shell game.
Didn’t you read the statement immediately above yours from Doug Rubin, the Governor’s Chief of Staff:
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p>Supporters of progressive issues should be able to find plenty of support from the Governor on issues they hold dear: the above are just a sample.
Stop being naive and listening to press releases as if they told the whole story. You’re supposed to be an editor of the Bay State’s biggest blog – falling for campaign spin and message work, instead of carefully examining the issue and being rational about it, is not very dignified considering your position. Obviously, we can’t all be experts on everything, but if we can’t be experts, at least we can be critical. Or focusing on the things that we actually do know about.
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p>Of course casinos were Governor Patrick’s key issue. He fought longer and harder for casinos compared to anything in his administration to date. If that’s not the definition of an administration’s key issue, what is?
Casinos are really raking in the dough. We definitely want that here, for sure!
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p>The casinos in the link have gone from making more hundred of millions to less hundreds of millions. It’s still a very, very profitable business sector.
is losing 19 million in one quarter “very profitable” or even profitable at all? Perhaps no one ever explained this for you, but you need to make more money than you spend to be “profitable.”
Where in that link did the article refer to anyone or anything losing $19 million? MGM’s 1st quarter results were profitable.
I copy and pasted the wrong link. Here’s the right one.
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With all due respect, Ryan, it is difficult to have a rational discussion on this issue if you simply dismiss every statement made by the administration. Secretary O’Connell was clear yesterday – the Governor’s priority is to work with the legislature to finish important initiatives on life sciences, clean energy, oceans, and various bond bills before the end of the session. These issues will have a tremendously positive impact on the state if we can work together with the legislature to get them passed this session.
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p>I also disagree with your suggestion that we fought longer and harder for casinos than any other issue. We spent over a year working with the legislature to reach a compromise on closing corportate loopholes, we have engaged over a thousand people across the state for the past year on the Readiness Project / education reform initiative, we have been pushing our life science legislation forward since May of last year (and it is close to resolution!), and Secretary Ian Bowles has been working with Speaker DiMasi and Senate President Murray on comprehensive energy legislation since last spring.
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p>These issues may not get as much attention as casinos, but they are clearly top priorities of Governor Patrick that we have fought for consistently over the past 16 months.
Doug, I assume you mean that the other issues have not gotten as much attention from the media as the casino issue has? Have they, in fact, received as much attention from the Patrick Administration as the casino issue has?
I did mean media attention. I can tell you without question that those other issues have received as much or more attention from the administration – we have dedicated a lot of internal resources working on closing loopholes and getting life science and clean energy legislation passed.
What loopholes?
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Rep. Bosley Blog
Is the quote accurate in the Globe: “But Patrick administration officials quickly signaled opposition…[to the idea of a referendum]…”
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p>In light of the administration’s 3 casino plan, and therefore general support for legalized casino gambling, why would the administration oppose a referendum?
…than the casinos that the Administration is doing. The legislature should finish work on the other critical economic development programs before worrying about casinos again. On the other hand, why did the State Democratic Committee allow a big lobbying firm (particularly gaming interests) Greenburg Traurig to sponser the Roosevelt Dinner? It really leaves a bad taste in my mouth and lends credence to the comments above about behind the scenes agendas.
Doug, I appreciate that the Administration has done work on other initiatives. However, to say that this was one of many equally important public policy initiatives is slightly disingenuous. The casino bill and the LS bill have been the Administration’s two top priority initiatives, by far. Especially considering the wall of opposition that you were clearly going to run in to in the House on the gambling issue, I can’t imagine that the Administration would have burned so many bridges had it not been a huge priority for you. Furthermore, having looked back at drafts of both bills when they were filed by the administration, it was hard not to notice that the LS bill was around 20 pages for $1 billion, while the casino bill was over 50 pages and much more detailed. While I understand that different policy issues demand different levels of detail, there was a very distinct discrepancy in the amount of detail between the two. This, on top of the extraordinary amount of press coverage on the issue – much of which was initiated and encouraged by the Administration – makes it very apparent that the casino issue was the marquee issue for the Administration in the first 14-16 months. This isn’t to say that you can’t change course now and win big on energy and life sciences – I really hope you do.
Doug,
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p>The Governor, Secretariats, and other members of the Administration have put inordinant amounts of time, energy and political weight into pushing casino gambling in Massachusetts.
The Governor presented the canned speech that we heard from October until March about “casinos not being the centerpiece” of the Administration’s economic plan and then proceeded to elaborate on the casino plan for the remainder of the speeches. MMA conference, Chamber of Commerce conferences/meetings, statewide speeches have all been repeated stumping ground for casino gambling by the Governor.
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p>I am waiting for an apology to the citizens of the Commonwealth from the Administration for the embarrassment of the filing of the crappy bill and publicly promoting bogus job creation numbers.
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p>What one loves best is not what one says, but where one puts their devotion.
I consider myself a partner with the Governor on his agenda moving forward. I’ve separated compartmentalized the Governor’s issues and have just agreed to disagree with him on casinos, while working to advance almost every other issue the Governor favors (that’s how good I think the rest of his ideas are).
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p>However, none of that does take away the fact that the Governor – at least in public – worked very, very hard for casinos for a very long stretch. Was his efforts on behalf of casinos magnified because the media paid more attention to it? Quite possibly. But they were still real. I went to the hearings.
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p>I still support the Governor, but I’m not going to let comments by Bob slide by that either suggest a ballot vote on the issue is a good idea (it’s not) or that casinos were no big deal to Governor Patrick. Of course they were a big deal. Meanwhile, as I said, we have a lot of issues we can work together on – and I’m going to continue to do that full speed ahead.
If you want to debate issues, Ryan, my suggestion is that substance and specifics are more constructive than invective. Simply casting aspersions on my intelligence and ability to read and lecturing me on my responsibilities to BMG is unlikely to produce any interesting discussion of substance. Similarly, dismissing rather than actually responding in a useful manner to Doug’s arguments is unfortunate. Thanks as always, however, for sharing your thoughts.
I didn’t say that I have the only rational position. However, promoting a cause that’s literally impossible isn’t a rational position. Saying that we should have one resort casino in this state isn’t a rational position, because federal law works in a way that by having one, you open up a process for there to be more. As long as current federal policy exists, saying Massachusetts should only have one casino is like saying people should only blink once a day. We’re hardwired to do that more, just as federal policy is hardwired to have an all-or-nothing approach to casinos.
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p>If you wanted to argue for several casinos, that’s a more rational position. It’s a position I’d disagree with profusely, but at least it makes more sense in that it’s actually possible.
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p>If you wanted to argue that those who disagree with their local representation on casinos should work to find a new candidate, that’s a rational position. Arguing that Beacon Hill lacks wisdom and that a ballot questions are preferable doesn’t make sense, especially given your other views on different issues that never did reach the voters because of Beacon Hill’s “wisdom.” Direct democracy on large scales have not been a boon to this world and ballot-questions galore have certainly caused more harm than good in California – so you’ve failed to explain the discrepancies and logic of your position.
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p>Finally, I did respond to Doug’s comments and I’m not attacking your intelligence. Pray, tell, where did I dismiss Doug? I just got to him today. I love BMG and its community, but I can’t be on it 24/7. I wouldn’t expect that of you, or any editor. Furthermore, you’re obviously a bright guy, but even the smartest have momentary lapses. As I said before, we all have our areas where we’ve done a lot of research and have a large knowledge base. If you think there’s a situation where Massachusetts can only have one casino, without opening up a federal process for more, then it’s clear to me that you haven’t clearly investigated this issue – and I would encourage you to do so.
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p>This is a cynical ploy by the Patrick administration to get what they want. Deval and his pro-gambling lobby in the legislature are forcing Sal’s hand.
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p>Let’s face it, Deval and his minions are addicted to tax revenue. To feed that addiction, Deval is going to inflict another addiction on the people of Massachusetts!
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p>The issue of the people’s voice is a red herring. Deval and the gambling industry want to freeze thought to when they won. When the people had time to think about it and all the downsides, they rejected the casino idea.
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p>Prior to three casinos, Deval should establish a system of statewide re-education camps to get the electorate to think the right way.
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p>Oh, if it wasn’t obvious, his way!
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I don’t see it.