Casino Saturation, Jobs, Revenue Overstated

For Immediate Release

New Casino Bill: Casino Saturation; Jobs & Revenue Claims Still Bogus

Contact: Jim Rubens (603) 359-3300

The newly released slot casino bill, SB489, would turn New Hampshire into the nation's second most slot machine saturated state, behind only Nevada in number of machines per capita.

SB489 would legalize six casinos and 17,000 slot machines, one machine for each 73 New Hampshire residents, with slots saturation about three times that of New Jersey, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania.

Sally Stitt, President of Star Media, who has played a critical role for over twenty years in helping protect and enhance the New Hampshire brand, testified in January to the New Hampshire Gaming Study Commission that, if New Hampshire were turned into a casino state, gambling industry advertising would "dwarf" New Hampshire's state and individual company tourism marketing and would "drown out" the very healthy New Hampshire brand messages by an order of magnitude or more.

SB489 also reduces the previous casino bill slot machine tax rate of 49 percent to 39 percent. The bill adds legalized casino table games, with profits taxed at 8 percent.

Competitive pressures in a now saturated gambling market will force the slot machine tax rate to drop again, either during negotiations on SB489 or shortly after legalization. Casino tax rates in Connecticut are 25 percent. The rate most recently proposed for Massachusetts is 27 percent. The average U.S. casino tax rate is 22 percent.

"Casino promoters are playing bait-and-switch with the legislature. Lure them in with phony revenue promises, then threaten to build slots barns and demand a lower revenue take for the state," said Jim Rubens, Chair of Granite State Coalition Against Expanded Gambling.

Gambling promoters are also touting the jobs and wages they would bring to New Hampshire. Las Vegas casino owner Bill Wortman, promoting a casino in Salem, claimed at a January gambling forum in Rochester that 90 to 95 percent of his casino jobs would pay $42,000 per year, including tips, about $20 per hour.

The New Hampshire Center for Public Policy Studies in its January update report (Table 29) discloses that the weighted average wage for 75 percent of the jobs at a typical U.S. casino is $9.60 per hour (not including tips, 2008 data).

The Center also reports that, once construction jobs wind down and a casino is operating, for every 10 North Country casino jobs added, 7 jobs will be lost at existing businesses.

"Legislators and taxpayers should view jobs and revenue claims made by gambling promoters with extreme skepticism and should abandon our family-friendly, healthy state image with extreme reluctance," said Rubens.