Lawmakers in Connecticut will likely discuss MGM Resorts International’s proposal for a $675 million casino in the state’s largest city, Bridgeport in the upcoming session of the legislature, which begins February 7.
Senator Marilyn Moore, who represents the city, is full of questions about the proposal, although, as she told the Connecticut Post, “I go to casinos. I go to Foxwoods. I do the slots. I know how to shoot craps.” She is concerned about the social ills and added traffic that a casino brings and thinks the state may already have enough casino resorts.
That’s just the opposite point of view of the other Bridgeport lawmaker, Rep. Ezequiel Santiago who thinks that New York City and Long Island, just across the river from Bridgeport are “markets that are still up for grabs,” as he told the Post. He added, “We should be proactive before someone else corners this market and we say, ‘How do we keep people from leaving southwestern Connecticut’ to gamble elsewhere?”
MGM is holding a news conference this week in which it will unveil legislation it has found a lawmaker willing to introduce. Uri Clinton, MGM’s spokesman and senior vice president, has been pressing the flesh with legislators in Hartford.
Last year Santiago and legislative allies failed to fan interest in a Bridgeport casino.
The new bill would create an open bidding process that would allow MGM and the state’s gaming tribes to submit proposals. Santiago points out that he has no favorites. “I’m trying to get the best deal for Bridgeport and the state.”
He will have to convince fellow legislators, Rep. Andre Baker and Senator Ed Gomes, who represent the part of the city where MGM hopes to build.
Baker said he lives within walking distance of the proposed location. He says his constituents are split down the middle over a casino. Baker has worries about traffic and how the casino might cannibalize existing small businesses. “I’d like to see it enhance the whole East End, not just this one particular area,” he said last week.
Gomes is concerned about creating competition for the Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun casinos, operated by local tribes.
Last year the legislature supported the Pequot and Mohegan tribes in their quest to build a satellite casino in East Windsor to help blunt the effects of the $950 million MGM Springfield—due to open in September— on local casino profits. MGM has fought that proposal at every step, both in the courts and in the halls of the legislature. The tribes see the Bridgeport gambit as merely the latest move in that battle.
The tribal state gaming compacts guarantee that the tribal casinos pay the states 25 percent of their profits in return for a monopoly on gaming in the state. MGM argues that it can more than make up for that loss to the state through revenues from a Bridgeport casino.
Gomes says he not ready to break the compacts yet. He likes the potential 7,000 jobs the casino could create but worries about saving the 9,000 actual jobs that the tribal casinos provide now.
State Rep. Steven Stafstrom, who has held forums for lawmakers on proposal, says the city could get about $30 million annually from MGM. Some audience members liked the ideal, others said it would be a source of corruption. The representative argues that it would be folly to dismiss the potential money out of hand. “I’m very supportive of the Legislature having a conversation about an open and competitive gaming process,” he told the Post.
The legislature’s public safety and security committee plans to hold informational hearings in early February and March with gaming experts from all over the country to discuss changing trends in gaming. The landscape is in constant flux, casinos face more competition, even from new threats such as fantasy sports and possibly sports betting.
Last year the legislature authorized Sportech Ventures Inc., the only off-track betting operator in the state to add new sites and set up a framework that could be used for sports betting, should the federal ban be lifted by the U.S. Supreme Court, which could rule on the ban this summer.
Lawmakers see the potential to make up for some of the revenue the state is losing due to declining revenues of the two tribal casinos. Right now, up to $200 billion in illegal bets disappear into a legal black hole. State officials increasingly would like to end that black market and collect the corresponding new revenue.
They agree with Dan Spillane, an attorney for the National Basketball Association, who told New York state senators, “These bets are taken in a black market that does not support local businesses, can-not be taxed and, most important from our perspective, can-not be monitored or regulated.”
Former Connecticut Rep. Robert Steele, who represented the state in Congress in the 1970s, argues that gaming is a bad bet for the state.
He urges residents to fight any kind of casino expansion. He told the Greenwich Times, “With each passing year we are learning more and more about the downside of what is happening here in Connecticut. Mohegan Sun and Foxwoods have created a pervasive gambling culture in southeastern Connecticut. They skewed the region’s economy there sharply toward low paying service jobs and they were followed by a sharp increase in the number of Connecticut residents seeking treatment for gambling addiction.”
He tells stories about businesses that opened in anticipation of increased business from a casino, only to be disappointed—and close.
“People drive to the casinos, they gamble at the casinos, they go to shows at the casinos, they drink at the casino bars, eat at the casino restaurants and when they’re all done, they fill up their gas tanks at the casino gas stations and drive home,” Steele said. “Local business people and merchants rarely see these people. There is very little evidence that casinos strengthen a state’s or a municipality’s longer-term finances.”
Steele is getting some covering fire from the League of Women Voters of Connecticut, and the Western Connecticut Council of Governments, which have both taken positions against any additional non-tribal casinos.
Meanwhile the tribes, through their joint authority MMCT, have not yet broken ground on their East Windsor casino, although they said recently that they will being demolishing the old cinema within the next few months.
Despite their attention being focus on this third casino, upgrades and new developments continues at the existing casinos. Last week Stony Creek Brewery announced that it will build a fully operational 7,100 square foot brewpub inside Foxwoods. This will be Stony’s second craft beer brewery in the state. The ambience will mix New England clapboard walls downstairs with an “aggressively laid back” nightlife upstairs. A summer opening is planned.
Jason Guyot, vice president resort operations & development at Foxwoods, commented, “We see craft beer as a major attraction in food and beverage, as evidenced by the incredible success we have had with the house IPA we’ve been making with Stony Creek for the past year.”
In a separate but related development the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation and the Mohegan Tribe have joined many other tribes in lobbying a bill in Congress that would exempt tribal businesses, such as casinos, from being under the jurisdiction of the National Labor Relations Board.
Pequot Chairman Rodney Butler, who has testified in favor of the Tribal Labor Sovereignty Act previously, last week told the New London Day that tribes want the same treatment as a state government, “That’s all we want — to be treated like other governments.”
Chuck Bunnell, the tribal chief of staff, added, “We’re not anti-union, never have been. We do believe tribal governments should be on a par with other governments. That’s essentially what this bill would do.”
The Tribal Labor Sovereignty Act, having passed the House in 2015, and been attached this year as a rider to an otherwise uncontroversial Indian bill, now faces considerable opposition in the Senate, where once it was passed by unanimous consent.
Connecticut Senate Richard Blumenthal opposes the bill. He told the Day, “While I strongly support the sovereignty of federally recognized tribes and their right to self-governance, this bill has little to do with that important cornerstone of federal-tribal relations or tribal authority.” He added, “The Tribal Labor Sovereignty Act—despite what its name implies—would instead strip millions of workers of their rights, robbing them of fundamental workplace protections.”
