Analyze This

The Sun Chronicle offered the following --


Last week on Beacon Hill, the Joint Committee on Economic Development and Emerging Technologies held hearings on gambling in Massachusetts. I wonder, has the Town of Plainville ever conducted an impartial cost benefit analysis to hosting a slot parlor, racino, or casino? I know the commonwealth has not. What are they waiting for?

With slot parlors, racinos and casinos going bankrupt around the country, expanded gambling is not a sensible solution. California is in dire straits. Nevada's unemployment figures are in the double digits. Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun have re-structured their debts. Twin River is in bankruptcy.

Job creation and revenue figures are flawed - dare I say, fictitious? What makes anyone think this is a good bet for Plainville?

We need jobs that provide a local economic multiplier and not low-wage, unskilled casino jobs with inadequate benefits that suck discretionary revenue from the local economy. We need jobs with a future, not jobs that will too often lead citizens to a dead end.

In addition to being the most regressive of all forms of legalized revenue raising, gambling has its most adverse impacts on those in the lower income brackets and on small businesses which lose out in competition with much more highly leveraged gambling establishments.

Revenue from gambling is itself a kind of swindle. Again and again, economic analysis has indicated the social costs of casino gambling are more than five times the economic benefit these enterprises generate. Studies indicate every $1 in revenue generated by predatory gambling will cost taxpayers $3. Although there are many people who gamble casually, economists estimate that between one-third and one-half of casino revenues come from less than 5 percent of the population, people who are problem or pathological gamblers.

The state lottery system is already exploiting the poor and near-poor. Adding private gambling opportunities would not only further "tax" the weak, it would allow wealthy investors to bleed off yet more of their limited resources. With current bankruptcy laws, the prevailing economic climate, and the desperation many feel, this could spell major disaster for the people least able to afford it.

Before the Legislature can go any further with the expanded gambling question, they must do a comprehensive cost benefit analysis that will provide sorely needed factual information, not promises of gold at the end of the rainbow. I urge our legislators to do the only fiscally responsible thing and put the cost benefit analysis in the works immediately.

MARY-ANN GREANIER lives in Plainville.