Should the State Bet on Casinos? Part 1 - By Chris Trakas

This opinion piece is part 1 in a series.

I am a member of the Milton Republican Town Committee. The issues of expanded gaming and casinos have become major news items in the past couple of months. I am a proponent of some type of expansion of gambling for various reasons. First and foremost, it is already here but the state gets no benefit from it. It is not like "the old days" when it was confined to Las Vegas and then to Atlantic City. Foxwoods, Mohegan Sun, and Twin Rivers are major casinos whose number one customer base is people from Massachusetts. Twin Rivers is located less than ten miles from the Massachusetts border and the Connecticut casinos are less than a 90 minute drive from a majority of the population of the state. Massachusetts residents are providing hundreds of millions of dollars annually to the states of Connecticut and Rhode Island through those casinos, money that should be staying here. We essentially have casinos in Massachusetts already, they just happen to be a short distance over the border and we get no monetary benefit from them.

There is much talk about the "social costs" of casinos. If there are social costs, they are already being felt. The above mentioned casinos are easy to reach by car. There are hundreds of extremely low priced bus trips carrying customers to them. It is important to help people who have problems with gambling, but that does not mean that everyone else should be excluded from participating and enjoying themselves. Any discussion of social costs should also include the social costs of not having expanded gambling in Massachusetts and the lost jobs in this state. Consider the money that has left the state and is not spent here on local projects and on improving the economy. Isn't it a social cost to constantly have Proposition 2.5 overrides that might be unnecessary if we were able to recoup some of the gambling revenue? Consider what has happened to the incomes of the hard working people at the state's racetracks. Those facilities have been greatly hurt by the Connecticut casinos. These people are long time, hard working Massachusetts residents. Is that not a social cost? I believe that the greater social cost is in not tapping in to the expanded gambling market.

There is also the idea of people enjoying themselves. People go to the casinos because they like it, it gives them something enjoyable to do, and there are social and nightlife opportunities that are not available here.

This state has been surrounded by states that have taken advantage of the opportunities to expand their gaming operations. These states certainly aren't being run by naive people who are chasing some sort of pie in the sky undertaking. Connecticut and Rhode Island are major gambling states. New York has tribal casinos and has also added gaming to the state's racetracks to create casinos. New Hampshire has already added poker to its racetracks and is seriously considering a major casino at the Rockingham track, which is about a mile over the Massachusetts border. Maine has expanded into casinos. A little further away, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Delaware have taken the casino route as well. All of these states have reaped billions of dollars of revenues over the years and are generally happy with the results. The facilities are heavily regulated, safe for their employees and customers and profitable for the states.

Up Next, Part 2: The Plan for Massachusetts.