Gambling Threatens What We Have Built

Joe Hallett commentary: Downtown could end up big loser if casino issue passes
Sunday, October 11, 2009 By Joe Hallett


It was a comfortable Friday night in August and three old buddies were in town for a weekend of biking and brews.

En route to Huntington Park to watch the Clippers get slaughtered by Indianapolis, we walked through the Arena District, dodging fans of Keith Urban, who was playing Nationwide Arena. The district was vibrant and exciting as people hurried to various venues.

We left the game five innings after it was over and, shoulder-to-shoulder with other patrons, waited for a table at Marcella's. After dinner, we strolled through the Short North, window-shopping the art galleries and unusual stores.

Observing other pedestrians, my friend from southern Indiana said he felt as if he was walking the corridors of the United Nations: "Is this really Columbus, Ohio?"

No denying it -- we have built a good thing here.

Let's not ruin it.

That, I fear, is exactly what will happen if voters approve State Issue 3 on Nov. 3 to permit casinos in Ohio's four largest cities. In Columbus, the casino would be built in the Arena District on Nationwide Boulevard, west of Huntington Park.

It would suck the life out of everything good we have built, everything that caused my buddies to marvel about what Columbus has become, making them eager to return. For sure, the casino would draw big crowds, but research shows that once inside a casino, patrons spend little money outside of it.

"If you bring a casino down here in Downtown Columbus, you're going to ruin a lot of the economic activity you have here already," warned John W. Kindt, professor of business and legal policy at the University of Illinois and a leading expert on the impact of legalized gambling.

The casino, in fact, would diminish the amount of money available for spending elsewhere, Kindt said. Some of the nation's most respected economists, including Nobel Prize winner Paul Samuelson, have concluded that gambling actually shrinks the economy.

Speaking to the Nebraska Business Forum, Howard G. Buffett, the eminently successful Nebraska businessman and son of the nation's second-wealthiest man, said, "Those who win at gambling obtain someone else's wealth without giving anything in return. It is the transfer of resources with no tangible benefit or gain. . . . It is not a formula you build an economy on."
At a news conference in Columbus last week, Kindt said that the average casino slot machine collects about $100,000 per year. The Columbus casino would have up to 5,000 slot machines.

"That's $100,000 that's not being spent on cars, refrigerators, computers and the necessities of life: food, clothing, banking, savings," Kindt said. It also won't be spent at Huntington Park, Nationwide Arena and the Short North's restaurants and shops.

Casinos adversely hit the wallets of all citizens. Studies presented to Congress project that the cost of legalized gambling to taxpayers is at least $3 for every $1 of theoretical benefit, primarily due to increased crime and addiction.

It is indisputable that with casinos come rises in assaults, rape, robbery, burglary, auto theft, bankruptcies, embezzlements, child abuse, homelessness, drug usage and prostitution. After a 10-year study, researchers at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology concluded in 2006 that crime increased 8 percent to 10 percent on average after a casino opened in a county -- and crime increases continued thereafter.

"For the FOP to ignore the mountain of evidence that casinos cause crime is astonishing," Kindt said, referring to an endorsement of Issue 3 by the Ohio Fraternal Order of Police.

But like other unions and a number of public figures duped or paid to lend support to Issue 3 in nonstop television commercials, the FOP fell victim to a $50 million propaganda campaign by greedy developers positing casinos as panacea for job and tax losses.

"Let them call it gaming instead of gambling," Buffett said. "Let them refer to it as family entertainment rather than casinos. But no matter what they call it, it will always be a losing proposition."

A Columbus casino will leave us poorer, less safe and burdened with social costs. It threatens what we have built here.

Let's not do it.

Joe Hallett is senior editor at The Dispatch.