David Bernstein has an unusually strongly-worded post on his blog regarding the ongoing stalemate over slots at the tracks.
Beacon Hill is jammed up over the question of how to shove money into the state’s four existing race tracks — including its two dog tracks, which are in particular financial trouble. Speaker Bob DeLeo wants the state to give the tracks licenses to install slot machines; Governor Deval Patrick wants instead to dedicate a portion of casino revenues to the tracks, a position that Senate President Therese Murray agrees with, if I’m not mistaken.
Now, I don’t mean to be rude, but what the f&$% is wrong with these people?
We’ve redacted the naughty word in keeping with BMG’s family-friendly front-page policy. đŸ˜‰
Anyway, he goes on to recall that MA voters voted to ban dog racing by a vote of 56-44, and
they certainly understood, as they cast their vote, that people would lose their jobs as a consequence.
I don’t imagine that many of those voters were thinking: I want to shut down these hellish businesses, but gosh, I hope that the state finds some way to shovel great loads of free money to the people who run them.
This can be very difficult to understand from the point of view of someone who doesn’t see the owners of Raynham Park or Wonderland as ogres profiting off of a despicable business. But most voters — I repeat, voters — clearly do see them that way.
Doesn’t this miss the point? Of course the voters don’t want to send free money to the people who run the dog tracks. But I think Bernstein gives oddly short shrift to the concern voters may well have had for the jobs of the people who work at the tracks.
Basically, nobody wants to throw someone else out of work. So I think what voters did in deciding how to vote on that ballot question is they weighed two evils – dog racing vs. killing jobs – and concluded that dog racing, because of its inherent cruelty to animals who cannot defend themselves and other reasons, was the greater evil. But that surely does not mean that voters didn’t feel bad about the jobs, and would try to save them if they could.
So, the argument might go, why not install slot machines? After all, casino gambling generally, and slot machines specifically, routinely poll well above 50% in this state, even though dog racing lost big at the ballot box. If slot machines can help track workers keep their jobs without bringing back the evil of dog racing, great! Win-win, right?
Wrong, some would say – but IMHO only those who see slot machines as nearly as bad, if not worse, than dog racing. For those who are either agnostic or pro-slots (and the polling suggests that’s a majority of MA residents), slots at the tracks seems to offer a neat solution to a problem that their own vote to abolish dog racing in MA created. I’m not saying I agree. I’m just saying that’s how I’d imagine a lot of people who voted to ban dog racing see it, and that’s why I think Bernstein is wrong.
if slots provide jobs (and they do, though not very many), what’s the argument to put them here instead of there? Because the folks who work ‘here’ were put out of work by the dog ban? The folks ‘there’ are just as deserving of jobs…
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p>I hear your argument, and if we were at full (or more) employment it might be more compelling to me. Right now though, there are plenty of folks everywhere who need jobs; why should the state give away money so that folks in one place get jobs?
These are not high paying, good benefits, skilled jobs but rather kinda basic hospitality jobs for the most part. Lets focus on boosting tourism, that will increase jobs in the same areas the slots would without the costs.
I’m pretty sure the folks at the dog tracks are represented by UNITE HERE – it’s been a while since I saw details on the Local 26 benefits package and it can vary by shop, but they have negotiated a robust health insurance and fringe benefits plan, including down payment assistance for first time home buyers – better than many professionals get.
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p>Your point about boosting tourism is valid, but my guess is that a job as Suffolk Downs is about 100 times better than working a counter or kitchen in a non union restaurant, which is exactly what we’ll be creating by simply “boosting tourism.”
I would rather create a thousand new jobs that paid minimum wage than create a hundred jobs at union wages. Not to mention besides indigestion and health problems, restaurants and hotels do not cause nearly as much economic damage to their surrounding communities as casinos due. Also tourism is a proven revenue generator, casinos are not. So no the costs do outweigh the benefits on this issue. Also there is not even a guarantee that the new casinos and racinos will be unionized like Suffolk is.
Say a parlor has a hundred slots. How may people have jobs there because of the slots?
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p>Now, how many jobs are lost in the surrounding area because of the money sucked out of the local economy by gambling? Slot machines don’t go to restaurants, or buy groceries, or use car washes, or any of the other things that people routinely spend money on. Money fed into slots disappears from the local economy.
Frankly I didn’t talk to a single soul who actually liked the dog tracks, my parents and brother simply voted the other way since they didn’t want to throw people out of work. My moms friend from work made some good money there being a waitress on the weekends so that connection outweighed animal welfare I guess.
I did so because I find dog racing cruel and reprehensible.
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p>At the same time, I am fed up with every single budget issues resulting in the firing of teachers, police and fire fighters. There are plenty of do nothing jobs at the BRA, at city hall, at the state level, at the probation department that can and should be eliminated to cut down on costs. Why would I want the track to intentionally become another money pit, that produces nothing?
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p>I don’t.
I think it benefits us all to work for the common good than try to tear each other down. I agree that there are some jobs that aren’t effective and exist for the wrong political reasons. I agree that there may be some jobs (including a few at the BRA) that are actually counter productive. I even agree that there may even be a few “do nothings” out there, though I’ll say I truly don’t think there are many.
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p>But, honestly, while we should pursue these things, making them our #1 target to rant about is a complete distraction from the real unnecessary and wasteful costs of this state, like some of our worst tax credits. I’ll also say that too often, when people rail against these jobs, they don’t do enough to differentiate between the bad and the good state employees, and so the takeaway for many people is generally that state government can do no good, or that all state employees are “do nothings.”
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p>Instead of tearing hard-working, state and municipal employees down, we should be focusing on the real problems in our state budget, such as our rapidly-expanding-beyond-inflation corporate tax credits that represent literally a billion and a half dollars in our quickly shrinking out-of-control state budget annually.
Employers have been closed in the last year through no fault of their own. Why shouldn’t they have at least an equal chance of receiving a slots license and creating jobs for their former employees or others who are out of work.
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p>I think of large spaces which are now open with parking, etc. that could be turned into a slot parlor like the former Dog Tracks. For example:
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p>1) Car dealerships. Shut through the actions of the Federal government after the auto bailout. Large spaces, large parking lots. Might want to take a crack at the slots.
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p>2) Shopping malls, supermarkets, department stores. All offer spaces often in excess of 100,000 square feet. Would seem a potential fit for slots and the associated “amenities” that come with them.
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p>3) Other open facilities. I drove by Faces the other day on Rt 2. How about slots at Faces.
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p>Finally, the argument that the dog tracks were closed because voters did not like the cruelty dealt to the dogs so they voted against the dogs and not the track employees. One major issue with this theory – the track owners were the ones who were racing the dogs and hence are at a minimum partially responsible for the treatment of the dogs that resulted in the votes to ban dog racing. That they will now receive a financial windfall for mistreating the animals and being forced to close strikes me as the worst possible outcome of the votes taken 2 years ago.
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p>If we must have slots then open bidding for all and I mean all, not just 4 politically connected locations.
Awesome idea! I’ve been driving by that awful thing for years. Does anyone know what the deal with it is?
Faces has been an eyesore for as long as I can remember and makes a terrible first impression when entering Cambridge from the West, although the Alewife garage is not much better.
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p>What I have heard about Faces is the parcel is owned by a group of brothers who have been in what can only be described as a long running feud. There are different factions within the family that do not talk with each other. Over the years, there have been developers who have thought that they had reached an agreement to acquire the property only to have it fall apart when the brothers couldn’t agree. Whatever the background, the parcel that is Faces has remained stagnant and an eyesore.
I rode past that desolate lot for years, and it always struck me that a strip joint is the only perfect explanation for the building, parking lot, and name.
With very popular nights for underage kids. I don’t know if it was 18+ but lots of kids I knew were going there at 15.
Both my mom and sister frequented that place in its heyday, apparently the place did well but the owner was heavily invested in the drug trade down in Miami and ‘disappeared’ shortly after the property got foreclosed. At least thats the most colorful tales I’ve heard about the place. Its a truly awful way to welcome people to Cambridge, and I feel bad for its neighbors, particularly Lanes and Games which is a wonderful place but could use a facelift of its own and is desperate for customers.
It seems that Ronald Martignetti is one of the owners of the Faces property. Don’t know if he’s associated with the liquor stores. I don’t think it ever was a strip club.
Empty Circuit Cities and Lin’ins and Things all over the state, closed and empty K-Marts, etc. etc. etc.
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p>There’s a reason why the Race Tracks are getting these favors, but not any of the other hundreds of large locations with a lot of parking that have gone out of business in the past few years — many of which still have vacant buildings littered across the state. The reason is not a legitimate one.
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p>A friend of mine had a great job at Circuit City and made some pretty decent money from them and hasn’t made anywhere near as much since then, and was unemployed for a long time. If this wasn’t about political favoritism and powerful district lobbies, the state would have been fighting just as hard for my friend as they have been giving Race Tracks free money.
this is one of the few unsolved mysteries left in this state.
CE is exactly right as to the merits.
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p>As to Bernstein’s argument, I actually think he has a point. All that we know from the vote to end dog racing is that people don’t want dog racing. Thus, the legislature should close the tracks. Everything else is just conjecture.
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p>In any event, if they put the licenses up for competitive bidding, as they should, the whole issue will become moot. That is what principled people should push for, if there are going to be slots.
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p>Incidentally, while I think a resort casino is a fine idea versus sending our money to CT as under the current arrangement, I don’t see any worthwhile benefit from slots parlors: they don’t create many jobs, they don’t make much money, they don’t provide a realistic alternative to the business we are losing to CT, and they do create problems, so why add them.
mistreating animals be about “the worst possible outcome” of that vote, but it would be asinine in the face of what the race track owners did to their employees to help their own cause.
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p>Let’s not forget that the state tried to help all the dog track workers get new training and find new jobs, reaching out in a way that I don’t think the state reaches out to many people who are either recently unemployed or facing unemployment, but their employers (the dog tracks) told them not to accept that retraining, so they could continue to push the job angle in the media and continue to give their allies that angle to push, as well — at least, that’s the only logical takeaway for why the employees were told not to take the retraining, IMO.
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p>The fact of the matter is, especially back when this was happening, before the recession we’re all in now, the state probably could have found many of these people jobs before the tracks actually shut down… had people like George Carney and the Suffolk guys )who own Wonderland, too) not had a different agenda.
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p>Again, I repeat: this isn’t and has never been about the jobs. It’s about getting Suffolk hundreds of millions in no-risk, no-bid free money.
The Mass Labor & Workforce Development Department runs the Rapid Response Services for Workers, it’s an excellent program. While the owners might have urged folks to delay the transitional programs, it’s also likely that the union was involved in that decision as well given that they often coordinate those services with a finer level of precision than an employer whose never gone through it.
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p>The other reason to delay the services is because there’s a good chance those jobs can be saved. When there’s a chance for saving the shop, folks often delay Rapid Response coming in because their presence sends a strong message that the job is gone for good, people lose hope. In fighting a plant shutdown, hope is often your best resource. I’m not saying delaying the state’s involvement isn’t self serving or even a bad idea, but it’s not necessarily malicious.
There have been literally dozens of articles focused on potential job losses for the tracks both before and after the dog tracks themselves were shut down. It was the focus of their anti-dog campaign before they lost, and it’s been the focus on their lobbying campaign after. It’s a little self-serving and disingenuous to send out those press and push to get lots of press over the jobs issue when you simultaneously — and for months and/or years — refuse the state’s help in retraining.
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p>If the state got the help in, especially earlier on as it tried, there never would have been all this press about the job issue, because the issue never would have been about the jobs. Contrary to what the Suffolk Down lobbyists and George Carney have to say, there really aren’t that many jobs at those dog tracks. We could have placed them all in new jobs, especially back in ’08. But that doesn’t sell the agenda. Given the politics of this, people should be very skeptical.
It’s self serving, sure, but when it comes to saving my job, I can understand self serving. In case you haven’t noticed, we’ve got ourselves a bit of an unemployment problem right now, so to say that
is actually the disingenuous statement, especially when
The vote to ban dog racing passed well into the recession – keeping these jobs was their best best. Especially when you look at the hand they’re holding: a governor who supports casinos; the speaker of the house who has race tracks in his district; a senate president who supports casinos; an issue that unites both the service and trades sections of the labor movement; the infrastructure to support a gambling parlor; and a politically connected owner – to not try and fight for the jobs would be the irresponsible thing to do. I know you don’t support casinos, these folks do – they’ve got a good shot at keeping their job, their seniority, their pension and their health insurance – you think they’d trade that for job retraining?
And at the same time hand the track owners what has been called in many places a “license to print money” without even the requirement to competitively bid on the licenses.
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p>Let the licenses, if there are to be any, be put out to a competitive bid. Let the state get as much as it can for them. Maybe the tracks will win, maybe they won’t, but it should be competitive and not a multi-million $ handout to the track owners.
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p>People, myself included, argued that giving Liberty Mutual tax breaks was not a worthwhile use of the state’s scarce resources. Well neither is potentially leaving millions of dollars in licensing fees for the state on the table or, better yet, in the pockets of the favored 2.
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p>Let them compete open and fairly.
I do think the state should consider pay and workplace democracy issues in bids, but yeah, there should be a competitive bid process.
Which I personally think are a bad idea.
The state was offering to come in, full force, to help with job placement and retraining. That offer was made, again and again, and continually refused. Meanwhile, the tracks were using the stories about the jobs as their publicity weapons. This is just what happened. You can say it’s not disingenuous, but I don’t think most people will agree with you.
Remember, this isn’t just about the dog tracks, but the horse racing tracks as well. Suffolk Downs and Plainridge have been major proponents of slots, and they’re not facing the same ban as Wonderland and Raynham. They just can’t run a profitable (enough) business and they’re looking for the mother of all hand-outs from the state.
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p>Suffolk Downs and Wonderland are in prime positions for redevelopment as residential or commercial use — they’re both on a transit line, close to downtown Boston, etc. Why not encourage reuse of those properties instead of handing over millions of unearned dollars to the track owners?
Both Wonderland and Suffolk Downs would have an infinitely larger and more positive impact on the local economy as commercial and residential redevelopments than as tracks or racinos, but this isn’t really about what’s good for Massachusetts.
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p>Hundreds of millions are already being invested in Revere right across the street from Wonderland, and not only does it benefit from the track, but the history and culture of having the first public beach in the entire nation. The possibilities for the land is truly limitless, at least if we can finally kill this zombie racino idea dead.
And I think a planned redevelopment would boost the surrounding areas, which are already pretty economically depressed (not to mention depressing to look at) far more than keeping a stale, dying, and destructive industry alive with corporate welfare handouts. Hell I’d be happy with redevelopment handouts, anything is better than keeping this places in business. Remember its not just that they are ugly, thrive on sports inherently cruel to animals, and thrive on robbing old ladies of their social security checks, they also are not economically viable on their own, if they were these guys wouldn’t be begging for a handout. Of course to DeLeo and his cronies the backwards logic of pumping water into a desert to take a smaller amount of water out of a dead well somehow works in their heads (I think the dollar signs they get in donations and bribes might also be effecting their neurons and gluons).
Here’s why I disagree:
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p>At the end of the day, people care about the “why” just as much as they care about the “how.”
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p>That the slot debate has extended thus far is truly shocking, given that the Governor, Senate President and Speaker are all ostensibly for slot machines. Why is that the case? That the Dog Race Tracks are still open, after a decades of losing millions every year, and after a two year period of having no races run at the track, is equally astounding. One, again, has to ask “why?”
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p>For those paying attention, the answer is simple. This isn’t about the jobs, or the dogs, or anything of the like. This is about the owners of these tracks, their political influence, power and friends. That they’re able to ground everything else to a halt, that they’re willing to keep their “tracks” open, even when they’re not even legitimately working tracks anymore, even though they’ve been a monetary loser for literally over a decade now, is illuminating. This is all about making buku bucks, waiting it out for slots at the race tracks by any means necessary, benefiting from one of the few, literal something-for-nothing schemes out there, without even having to put a real bid to get the slots.
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p>This has always and will always be about getting these particularly powerful individuals their slots, so they can get a wad of cash for nothing. That’s all. No matter how people feel about expanded gambling through legalizing slot machines, I don’t think people will want this if they ever get the chance to know what this is really all about. The fact of the matter is if this group was really serious about creating jobs right now, we’d be having an entirely different discussion than slots, casinos and racetracks yet again.
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p>Instead, we’d be talking about tax credit transparency, the health care cost reform bill Murray’s been pushing would have gone through months ago and we’d make sure some of the money saved through bringing transparency and light to the tax credit process was going toward public transportation, local aid and public higher education. Doing those things would all create jobs for the state at little to no cost, pushing these slot machines is only going to shift locally owned small business jobs to large business jobs that suck money out of the local economy, never to be seen again.
“The fact of the matter is if this group was really serious about creating jobs right now, we’d be having an entirely different discussion than slots, casinos and racetracks yet again.”
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p>Redevelopment of this prime, prime real estate would net pretty decent profits for the owners (let’s face it, real estate in that area is pretty sparse), increase jobs, and be great for those local economies.
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p>But not one of these owners has put forth an idea, of reconstructing the racetracks into something else. That takes investment, and time, and they’d rather be handed free money instead. I mean, wouldn’t you?
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p>As long as we keep this damn conversation open (about slots at all), those places will continue to be completely underserving the Commonwealth.
I could definitely see a mixed use development at Suffolk Downs kinda like Station Landing in Medford, which took a depressing looking place that was an eyesore and made it a destination. Both are also located next to public transportation hubs making this redevelopment sustainable as well. Sadly Lynne you and I both know that money, corporate money, and corrupt lobbies for dying industries matter far more to Beacon Hill than sound public policy.
There are many venues that could be open to hosting slot parlors if they were legal – shopping malls, amusement parks, ski resorts (what better way to offset seasonal losses?) The proposal the Speaker is apparently mandating to everyone is that the facilities in his district are the only ones that should be afforded this “opportunity”. It is a no-bid contract and it is political grandstanding that may assist the Speaker but does little for the rest of us in the Commonwealth. The jobs are not GOOD jobs with GOOD pay and benefits that we should focus on developing for all residents.
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p>This whole deal is about one man – the Speaker – using his power to give to businesses in his district without any competition. The only people who lost jobs that matter are the ones in his district? What about everyone else and why can’t they compete for this new “opportunity” if they want to?
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p>Yuck to this dirty business and to those who believe this is doing anything but further eroding people’s confidence that anyone serving in the Legislature has a clue as to what is the right thing to do. I am one disillusioned voter – and even more disillusioned Democrat, as it is the Democrats who are making this happen inside the Legislature.
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p>Yuck.
… is similar to my fear about casinos in general. There was talk about putting riders in the license about limiting establishments with regard to what they could do with entertainment and food and such with the idea that this would mitigate their impact as a black hole sucking on the custom of other local businesses. The problem with that is you’ll get anyone to agree to that in order to get their foot in the door, then down the road their business plan will be to spend their money to lobby and get it changed (which would likely succeed given money’s impact in election results). Now with Citizens United it’s even more likely.
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p>Similarly, if the license for the slots is transferable to other geography, what we’ll see is slots that uphold an otherwise failing institution (racing) for a while, followed by a business plan that shows that slots in alternate location x will make more cash than the slots at that tracks. Then they’ll find a way to move.
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p>Once they get their foot in the door, any mitigation efforts on by way of policy crafting will be sidestepped at a later date. Remember also that it will be easier for them to do these fixes for themselves than the original act of getting the whole enterprise started.
Make each of them come back and get affirmative approval from the lege every x years, say every five. Act like a jerk? Political winds change? Sorry, we’re not renewing your license. It’s unlikely that a non-renewal would happen, but it might be enough to keep ’em on their toes.
Opening the door to even some of them will eventually let all of them in, kinda like that fungus in those drug commercials that lets his whole family into your foot. In IL first we allowed slots, then we allowed video poker, now we allow riverboat casinos and Quinn wants to expand video poker to bars and restaurants and expand casino licenses to destination/resort style casinos that are on land. You let one in you let em all in. Closer to home CT approved Foxwoods which made it that much easier to approve Mohegan Suns. Bugsy Malone just got Las Vegas approved for casinos, and then the whole state eventually legalized it. This is the pattern. I say lets stop it in its tracks now.
Even if racing weren’t banned, the tracks were no longer viable businesses and would definitely have gone bust. Several other dog tracks of shut down around the country as well without any voter interference. The fact is that very few people want to go to the track anymore. The same goes for horse racing – even the premier tracks are mostly empty except for a handful of big race days. The track owners have been supremely lazy and have made little attempt to look for a new business model other than whining about slots; they do not deserve to be rewarded.
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p>Don’t forget that there are many more people who never worked at the tracks who need jobs just as badly.
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