A Pennsylvania
newspaper, The Morning Call, broke the damning
story yesterday:
"Casinos
broke their revenue promises"
Surprise, surprise.
Except maybe to those still buying the gambling lobby's "destination casino"
fairy tale.
It turns out that
casino developers in Pennsylvania's competitive licensing process greatly
overstated potential tax revenues in order to secure casino licenses.
"When Pennsylvania
was deciding in 2006 who should get a license to run state-regulated casinos,
gambling companies from around the country arrived in Harrisburg with big
promises of how much money they could bring to the state. It turns out that
many of those casino executives were exaggerating by as much as 50 percent on
how much gambling revenues their gaming halls would generate," reports the
Morning Call.
Only the track
casinos not subject to PA's competitive proposal process -- and thereby
guaranteed their licenses -- came close to hitting their revenue
projections.
The Call asks
whether the great recession explains the exaggerated revenue projections:
"[S]ize may have had
something to do with it. While the tracks were adding smaller casinos onto the
existing horse-racing facilities, the stand-alone casinos were building much
larger facilities. In most cases, the stand-alones planned to open with 3,000
slot machines and increase to 5,000 in six months. That didn't happen with any
of them.
Mount Airy's numbers
have been so disappointing that it has removed hundreds of slot machines from
the floor, dropping its total to just above 2,000.
Sands also did not
follow through on its plan to expand to 5,000 slot machines ...'Based on the
economic conditions at the time, we decided against the additional slot
machines,' said Sands spokeswoman Julia Corwin."
Bills coming before
the New Hampshire legislature require a competitive proposal process, similar to
Pennsylvania's -- for both track and non-track proposals.
Lessons
for New Hampshire Legislators:
- Rely ONLY
on independent revenue projections not paid for by casino developers. Ignore
casino developers' tax revenue promises.
- Beware of
provisions in any casino bill allowing for "Phase 1" or "Temporary" casinos. The
promised 5,000 machine destination casino shown in the glossy presentations will
not happen because the New England casino market is saturated.
- Wishing
and hoping for a destination casino will not make it so. All New Hampshire will
ever get are local-market casinos, not attracting tourists, but cannibalizing
consumer spending from and killing jobs at thousands of existing local New
Hampshire businesses.
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