We meet tonight at Monson Town Offices, 110 Main Street at 7pm.
It is an open meeting. Good opportunity to learn about the comprehensive fiscal impacts that affect host regions.
You were joking that traffic citations would cover costs in Monson, weren't you?
The net theoretical gain of having Masschusetts gamblers ($800 mill/year estimated going to CT) spending their money in MA might be as high as 27% (tax on the revenue), less those who would continue to prefer 'going-away'.
Let's say MA retained $200-270 mill. plus $125 mill per license-renewable every 10 years (going rate according to recent senate hearing testimony by casino industry) and two or three licenses are granted... we would be looking at $312 mill/year revenue for the state to close a growing $4 billion dollar deficit.
Do you think the revenues will stay locally to assist with mitigation of the costs to the municipalities? Of course not, it is the Boston agenda that has set this stage and there is no model anywhere of host regions receiving the funds necessary to mitigate the costs. The region would never see the full amount of funding needed for mitigation because the math does not work.
The AG would need to establish a Gaming Regulatory Commission (NJ employs 500 state workers for that task) which cost tens of millions of dollars per year. The AG has stated that new racketeering laws, RICO and money laundering and surveillance are needed if the Commonwealth goes in the direction of legalizing slots. Gov Patrick has stated that mitigation for increased gambling addiction (estimated by Prof. Goodman to cost the taxpayers $13,200 per addict/year in 1990's dollars) will be funded.
Anyone concerned about their taxes whether you gamble or not, would benefit from learning about local fiscal impacts on this issue. The town would have more demand on it's services without sufficient increased aid to offset the demands.
Up to 12,600 new students were estimated to come with new workers in the Spectrum Gaming analysis of the Governor's 3 casino proposal. Let's say only 2,000 new students come to our region...Monson taxpayers pay for over 30% of each students PPE, the state pays the balance with exceptions for special education that may be much more costly.
Housing, infrastructure, education, public safety, transportation, sanitation, water (Palmer does not have sufficient water to host a casino), air pollution (9,000-12,000 visitors per day).
CT Div. of Special Revenue study of casinos and gambling recently released reveal that the host regions have been "enormously" underfunded.
Check out pages 135-136 contributions to municipalities"The casino revenue split between the state and Connecticut municipalities was initially tilted in favor of municipalities. In 1994, for example, nearly 80 percent of the $113 million collected went to the municipalities. Just two years later, the split was two thirds state, one third municipalities. Since then, the state has continued to keep more and more of the pie. The state‘s share in FY 2008 was nearly 80 percent.
The dollar amount flowing into the state‘s General Fund has increased from $24 million in FY 1994 to $340 million in FY 2007, a more than 13-fold increase.By comparison, the state‘s municipalities have seen their take stay relatively constant. In FY 2007, the municipalities split $86.3 million, $2 million less than they received in 1994. The amount of money set aside for Connecticut municipalities is approved each year by the General Assembly."
Pioneer Institute (conservative think tank) has research on the increase in high school drop out rates for host regions to slots/casinos.
As tax policy, gambling is among the most regressive tax, taking a disproportionate share of revenues
from the elderly and low- and moderate-income families.
As social policy, we know that gambling is bad for kids and families. Teenagers and casino employees are the most vulnerable to becoming problem gamblers. Today 1.1 million children in the U.S. between the ages of 12 and 18 are pathological gamblers. As they get older they will swell the ranks of adult problem gamblers, now numbering between 1.8 and 2.5 million. As fiscal policy, the prospects
are also fuzzy. Indications are that gambling revenues level off after a few years. Consequently, expanding gambling will not help solve the State’s fiscal crisis, but will rather serve as a smokescreen of the serious structural imbalance between overall state spending and the ability of our economy to support it. New casinos have not prevented large budget deficits in Illinois or neighboring
Connecticut.
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