“Cities and towns should be able to decide if they would support a casino project”. Senator Markey hit it out of the park with that quote.
A day after anti-gambling advocates seized on remarks by U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren that she will vote to repeal the state’s gaming law, U.S. Sen. Edward J. Markey said he supports keeping the much-debated measure when it hits the Nov. 4 ballot.
The ballot initiative, labeled Question No. 3, is asking voters to nix the law Gov. Deval Patrick signed in late 2011, clearing the way for up to three casinos and a slots parlor statewide. Markey said yesterday in a statement to the Herald that he will vote “no” on the repeal question.
“On balance, I believe Governor Patrick was thoughtful and careful when he signed legislation in 2011 that allows cities and towns to decide to permit casino gambling in their communities,” Markey said. “After weighing both the benefits and costs associated with casino gambling, cities and towns should be able to decide if they would support a casino project. However, at the same time, I respect the arguments of those who oppose the legislation and their right to vote to repeal it at the ballot box.”
. . . if the harms of those casinos were only felt in the towns where they’re located. They aren’t, so it doesn’t.
Senator Markey is just another statewide elected official who is voting against repeal and believes that a local community should control what happens within its own borders. That’s the real point.
Voters in Springfield, Everett, Revere, Leominister, Plainville voted to allow a casino as an economic engine but there votes should be over-ridden by someone who lives 100 miles away? Really. Can I vote to put a trash to energy facility in your hometown even if you vote gainst it?
Under your theory several municipalities that are affected by Patriot games should be able to vote to ban football in Foxboro.
My town convinces a manufacturing plant to locate there to increase the tax base. Even through the plant passes all legal tests the bordering communities have a right to vote to stop the plant because they think their will be problems?
Slippery slope time.
first there should be their and other their should be there.
The issue isn’t whether a plant “that passes all legal tests” should be subject to the objection of neighboring communities. The issue is whether the “legal tests” should be altered in order to permit a toxic waste dump–which would affect all communities– in any community foolish enough to embrace it, notwithstanding the objections of the others who will bear its costs.
Are we not allowed to express disagreement with anyone now?
The externalities are beyond debate here. The very votes to which you refer were themselves made possible by statewide legislation. The only ways to repeal statewide legislation is by newer statewide legislation or by ballot initiative. Absent the 2011 casino legislation, would we have been bound by a vote in Revere that said they wanted a casino? A vote in Provincetown or Attleboro (chosen randomly) that they’d like legalized prostitution or crack? The towns are creations of the state, not the other way around.
The casinos are not just a town-by-town issue. Yes, a casino will disproportionately affect the town in which it is located, thus the requirement that the town approve. That in no way implies that the voters in that town are the only ones it affects. And no, we are not just talking about neighboring communities here. The only reason that the towns got to have these votes in the first place was because a law was passed at the state level without any voter input.
Something that negatively impacts towns for at least a 50 mile radius should be voted on just by the town getting the million dollar pay-out? Seems completely fair to the communities up-ended around that one town to you?
Casinos are not just big buildings. They suck in billions of dollars of discretionary spending from the surrounding neighborhoods, putting family shops out of business while driving people to bankruptcy and debt. As much as the unions are excited to make big buildings, it’s what’s inside the casinos that make them different than other developments.
Support them if you don’t care about anything more than the budget of the city they are placed in.
Would Senator Markey say yes to dog tracks?
And by the way, casinos are not a tax base, they are a community hazard with an overall negative affect on town and state budgets.
The dog tracks were no longer a viable business. The only way to have kept them open was to allow them to offer other forms of gambling.
“The dog tracks were no longer a viable business”….have you missed the headlines about casinos in New Jersey, Mississippi,New York…..casinos are not a viable business.
If your crazy neighbor starts piling up dead cats on the front lawn, you’re probably going to take issue with that. The stench and general health hazard it creates makes it your business too. Had the casino law been well-crafted (and it wasn’t) then there should have been a radius vote instead of a municipal vote. Everyone within X miles (e.g 10, 25, 50) should have had a say and every community within that radius should have been deemed a host community. That would have given affected communities an actual say in the process and it wouldn’t have put cities and towns at the mercy of their most desperate neighbors.
I don’t care that the “voters” of some town decide they want a casino. A casino is bad for their community and bad for mine. They shouldn’t get it.
Care to clarify this strange position? Should we let voters vote on, say, voting?
n/t
We feel the need to let people decide whether they get to make a bad decision or not. When you were a kid, if you and your siblings wanted cake for dinner, did your mom put it to a vote and then say “aw shucks. you want cake for dinner. guess I’ll make one.”
We are a republican democracy, but there isn’t a rule saying that everything has to be put to a vote and said votes must be abided by. A brave politician would recognize their vote, thank them for participating in the democratic process, and then ignore it entirely. That’s leadership I could believe in.
I’m generally fairly sympathetic, though I don’t believe representatives should make a habit of completely ignoring their constituents’ wishes. But I’m not sure how it applies here.
But in this instance there was a vote by the legislators, and they chose at least to give residents of a town in which a casino wanted to locate the right to reject the casino by vote. Are you saying they shouldn’t have done that – should have just authorized casinos and called it a day?
Likewise, we have a ballot initiative process here. The voters get their say on this and other issues. It’s onerous, so not “everything” is put to a vote, but some things are. Do you oppose that as well?
All that said, I agree that the proponents of casinos citing these particular “yes” votes as sacrosanct exercises of democracy is silly for the reasons given above by doubleman and others.
that I don’t see the reason for consideration in the first place. In general, I’m not really a huge proponent of ballot measures (at least as the system we have in place stands) and when it comes to stuff like this, I think less voting is better than more. I think giving the towns the ability to reject a casino doesn’t mean that by not rejecting it, they are actively voting for it.
Doubly so; if Markey supports casinos, that’s disappointing. But the anti-repeal argument based on “Cities and towns voted” also doesn’t feel right to me. It feels like a lobbyist’s argument that some public officials have picked up on.
It’s as if the push for casinos was some grassroots groundswell in those cities, as opposed to an act of desperation the business elite and boosters in those towns seized upon. I never saw a single petition drive before the legislature passed casinos agitating for their construction. Not even a non-binding town wide resolution.
And yeah, if casinos pass, Markey can add them to NAFTA and the Iraq War on the list of bad ideas he supported that hurt Massachusetts.