Gambling board member quits, pans expanded gaming

Thursday, April 19, 2007 - Bangor Daily News

A member of the Maine Gambling Control Board has resigned and is speaking out against proposals to expand the number of slot machines in Maine.

In his resignation letter to Gov. John Baldacci, Mike Peters of Dixfield said the state must do all it can to stop the spread of gambling.

Maine is not benefiting as promised from the state’s only slot machine facility, Hollywood Slots at Bangor, and further expansion of gambling could create "grave harm" to the people of Maine, Peters wrote in his letter, dated April 3.

"If we do not act to reduce the shameful profits being made by gambling operators and the coalition of beneficiaries that support them, our state and our people will soon be overrun with the few getting rich at the expense of the many," Peters wrote.

"We have an obligation to do things that are right for all of our people, not just a privileged few," Peters told the Bangor Daily News Wednesday in a telephone interview. "That’s how I honestly feel.

"I want to protect my state," he said. "I don’t want to damage the operation in Bangor because the people voted for that," he said. He did say, however, that the state and Bangor, Hollywood Slots’ host city, "left money on the table" when they negotiated their portions of the proceeds.

"I testified before the Taxation Committee right after I resigned [from the gambling board] and I gave them a way for Bangor and the state to make more money from this," he said. His suggestions included a $6 admission fee for slots patrons, $4 of which would go to the state and $2 of which would go to the city. Another suggestion was to put a sales tax on gambling.

He said a large factor in his decision to step down from the board was his belief that he could have more impact on slowing the spread of slots as a private citizen than as a member.

Lawmakers this month gave approval to a proposal to allow the Passamaquoddy Tribe to build and operate a harness racing track and resort with slot machines in Washington County. If Baldacci vetoes the bill as expected, Mainers would vote on the measure in a statewide referendum in November.

The Penobscot Indian Nation is also seeking to have lawmakers allow them to operate 400 slot machines during high-stakes bingo games on their reservation. Meanwhile, a Rumford-based group launched a campaign last year to collect signatures to force a statewide referendum to allow a casino in Oxford County in western Maine.

Some of the state’s nonprofit groups also are pushing for the right to operate slots.

"All they see is free money," Peters said by phone Wednesday. "If we don’t stop this, we’re going to have them on every corner."

Peters, who was appointed to the five-member gambling board in August 2004, wrote that he expects other board members to resign. He said Wednesday he is concerned that further departures will take away valuable knowledge and experience from the board.

"There are some other folk of good moral fabric on the board and they suffer from the same affliction that bothers me — a desire to do what is right for all the people of Maine," Peters wrote.

Rep. Donald Soctomah, the Passamaquoddy tribal representative, said a racino resort — with a hotel, conference center and restaurants — would go a long way toward helping Washington County, where unemployment rates are high and incomes are low.

The state is being unfair, he said, in expanding its state-run lottery games and allowing slot machines in Bangor without allowing the Passamaquoddys a similar opportunity.

"It’s pretty sad for [Peters] to make this dance now just when the tribe’s doing this initiative and to try to base his resignation on that," Soctomah said.

Peters said a Down East racino simply won’t work.

"There is no market for it," he said.

Gambling establishments like the one in Bangor and the one proposed for Washington County draw the lion’s share of their patrons from within a 35- to 50-mile radius, and Washington County’s total population is under 35,000 people.

He also said it was unlikely the Washington County facility would attract many Canadians. New Brunswick, just over the international border, now has one slot machine for every 206 people.

Gambling Control Board Member Resigns, Warns Against More Casinos
By Casinos No!
Apr 18, 2007

Mike Peters Says He Would No Longer Support Racino Bill

PORTLAND – A member of Maine’s Gambling Control Board has resigned so he can more freely speak out about the facts of slot machines and casino gambling. In an interview on MPBN’s MaineWatch last week, Mike Peters, a small businessman from Dixfield who served three years on the board, said the Legislature should not approve more slot machines until more is known about the impact of Hollywood Slots, the racetrack casino in Bangor.

“I just cannot accept the fact that Maine people are going to walk in there and lose their life savings in these machines and that we’re not willing to wait long enough to find out what the effect is,” he said. “The Legislature has got to slow this process down. We can’t just have a racino in Calais, and a casino in Oxford County, and 400 machines on Indian Island, and then the non-profits all want machines. They think this is a panacea for success. And it is not.”

During the wide-ranging interview with reporter Susan Sharon, Peters raised several concerns about slot machines and whether the revenues from Hollywood Slots that are divided among several interest groups are fully accounted for. He said voters were promised in the 2003 campaign that money from the slots would benefit Maine’s harness racing industry and lower the cost of prescription drugs for the elderly. But he said the Gambling Control Board lacks the authority to even ask if the money is accomplishing its goals.

“All we can do is collect the money and pass it out,” he said. “Once we do that, our authority ends. I can tell you how much the off-track-betting parlors are getting (from Hollywood Slots). I can’t tell you what they do with the money. They just put it in their pocket and where it goes is their business. If the money is going to go to them, then it should be accountable, every single penny of it, to make sure it’s doing good for horsemen. And that’s what our intention, supposedly, originally, was all about.”

Peters also said legislators and the public lack a full understanding of how slot machines operate. “People have to understand what a slot machine is,” he said. “They think it’s just a random machine that you spin the wheel and you get what you get, and that’s not the way it works. In every case, the operator is the only winner. They take their eight or nine percent right off the top, and then the machines spit out in a random way prizes designated for the public who is playing these machines. So when you walk into a racino or a casino and you put your money in a slot machine, what you’re doing is you’re gambling against your friends, your neighbors, the old lady down the block and your grandmother. And any money that’s lost in those machines comes out of the mouths of the people of Maine, and not another jurisdiction.

“We have to understand that that’s what we’re doing when we walk into a slot parlor and put our quarter in,” he continued. “We’re a loser, just by definition.”

Peters said it’s a myth that racetrack casinos attract tourists from other states.

“That’s what they tried to sell us at the beginning,” he said. “That they’re going to bus people in, that that’s what happens in other jurisdictions. And as Maine people we look at Foxwoods and we say, ‘Gee, there are busses going to Foxwoods, that must be right.’ And I was one of those folks too. I believed that was true. It isn’t. Ninety-six percent of the people who entered Hollywood Slots in Bangor come from Maine. And ninety-five percent of them come from within a 35 to a 50-mile radius of Bangor. So we’re taking money right out of the pockets of Maine people, and we’re giving it to someone else.”

Peters also said he was dismayed that some legislators seem unwilling to look at the facts regarding the effects of slot machines. He said a recent article in the Bangor Daily News concerning a woman who lost more than $100,000 at Hollywood Slots was circulated among legislators. “And the strange thing about it is that a legislator stood up on the floor during the debate the other day and said that he didn’t believe a word of that story,” Peters said.