MA Gov Patrick Hears The Evidence: Now Opposes Slot Parlors and Racinos

 

Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick met last week with the leaders of USS-Mass, the Bay State’s anti-gambling group, spending over an hour hearing and asking detailed questions about the economic and social costs of predatory gambling. The Governor responded to the facts by calling immediately for a new slot casino cost/benefit analysis, stating that concerns about “the human impact are very well taken.”

 

The evidence presented by anti-casino leaders was so compelling that the Governor went even further, sending this letter to legislative gambling supporters indicating a partial reversal of his prior casino support. Governor Patrick wrote that “… the conversation confirmed in my mind that slot parlors, “racinos” or any other form of convenience gambling is not something I can support.”

 

Who will be the first New Hampshire racino (aka Millennium) supporter brave enough to admit that the evidence of harm is powerful and to publicly recant?

 

“Limited” Gambling in Pennsylvania Proves A Bogus Promise

 

As a supposed “fix” to Pennsylvania’s budget and property tax problems, the Keystone State legalized slots casinos in 2004. Just five years later, Governor Rendell is threatening budget cuts if table gambling is not added at all casinos.

 

Could there be any better evidence that the predatory gambling industry’s promise of  “limited” gambling is just a bait & switch?

 

For naïve slots supporters, if slot casinos are legalized in the Granite State, here’s how bait & switch will play out:

 

o        The predatory gambling industry will plead poverty and build only slot parlors

o        Revenues will come in later and lower than projections

o        Gambling lobbyists will browbeat the legislature into reducing casino tax rates

o        To get anywhere near revenue promises, casinos and slots will expand, step by step, into more types and locations, with the negative human and economic impacts falling on every New Hampshire community.