Massachusetts: The politics of dependency

The politics of dependency
By CYNTHIA STEAD
The Massachusetts Senate is considering a casino bill, and the language is revealing.

For instance, the penalty for an entity that “conducts or operates any game using a cheating and swindling device or game ... or permits to be conducted, operated or displayed, any cheating and swindling device or game, shall be punished by imprisonment in the state prison for not more than 5 years.”

How the state will send itself to jail is not mentioned.

Lots of interesting stuff in there. “Any commission employee assigned to a gaming establishment shall be considered an essential state employee,” so when a snowstorm hits Boston and state workers stay home regardless of local weather, you can feel secure that gambling can continue even if there's nobody at the RMV or town hall.

But they prove they care by demanding casinos have their “security personnel conduct regular checks of parking areas for minors left in motor vehicles and immediately report any such finding to the local police in the municipality where the gaming establishment is located.”

The Senate also wants to allow 25 percent of casino space to smoking areas. After harassing VFW's with court suits and sanctimoniously dismissing complaints of restaurants that had already invested in smoke mitigation systems, the state wants to allow smoking in a public place now that it's their venue that might lose revenue instead of mere businesses.

There will be help to “to assist social service and public health programs dedicated to addressing problems associated with compulsive gambling, including ... gambling prevention and addiction services, educational campaigns to mitigate the potential addictive nature of gambling.” So the money will be there to teach children to avoid the casinos. Why open them in the first place? For the new funds that will be created with the profits!

They're all in the bill – Transportation Infrastructure and Development Fund, Education Fund, Economic Development Fund, Public Health Trust Fund, the Community College Fund. But the bill goes beyond the usual noble causes. There are also percents and half-percents strategically doled out to create dependency in all sorts of activities. The Massachusetts Cultural Council share will be divided among all the town cultural councils, along with a new grant program for artists, and tribute money for nonprofit performing arts facilities like the Cape Playhouse.

Some goes to the Massachusetts Tourism Fund, chronically cut by the Legislature. There's the Local Capital Projects Fund, a local infrastructure bank. There's even 5 percent to the Community Preservation Fund to kick start the matching funds the state was running out of – and when stories break about child abandonment, or sexual abuse of runaways, or parking lot robberies, there will be dozens of local committees and councils who will depend on that funding who can comfort themselves that it was just an exception, and they aren't really predators.

We'll see press releases about new revenue, without mentioning that “gross revenue or gross gaming revenue ... shall be considered budgeted fund state tax revenue, regardless of the type of fund into which the revenues are deposited.” This means that while money sits it all these little pools of dedicated funds created in the bill, the state will be telling us that we are already winners while hoarding the money.

But the bill carries within it the seed of its own economic collapse. “The Massachusetts gaming commission shall, in consultation with the state lottery commission, establish a committee to analyze and develop recommendations and model legislation with respect to the issuance and implementation of internet poker licenses” with a bill by July 2012. The ONE thing that could make the casino bill worse is the legalization of online gambling. We'll set aside for the moment the potential for financial abuse, domestic violence, gambling-fueled despair in the comfort of your own home, etc. If online gambling is legal, why would anyone go to a casino? To pay for the gas to drive there? To enjoy the mediocre luke-warm buffet?

The only reason to have a casino is for the state to “make” money by plundering its unfortunate. Now, we won't even have that, unless the state has some way for the Cayman Islands to agree to give them a cut by selling them a “license.”

Government-run vice is an intrinsically bad idea, and we are a decade too late for casinos to generate substantial revenue to even offset its social costs. It is supported by weak legislators unable to exercise the self control to cut the budget instead of preying upon citizens. They should be ashamed of their vote, and we should be ashamed of them.

Cynthia E. Stead is the Republican state committeewoman for the Cape & Islands. Email her at cestead@gmail.com.