Chances are iffy for a bill in the Connecticut legislature MGM Resorts International is pushing hard for that would authorize opening up casinos to commercial bidding and which lawmakers from the Bridgeport area introduced in January.
MGM last week largely sponsored an event at Housatonic Community College that was meant to educate officials and business about MGM’s pet project in the state’s largest city in the harbor that is connected by ferry to Long Island and beyond that to New York City.
The bill would create a competitive bidding process for another casino. That would, according to the wording of the state tribal gaming compact, violate the compacts because the Mohegan and Pequot tribes are guaranteed a monopoly on gaming in return for paying 25 percent of their profits to the state.
On the flip side, MGM claims the state would actually get more tax dollars by allowing a competitive bid to pick the most economically viable location for a new casino.
The symposium included panel discussions on job and entertainment opportunities a casino can bring to a community. Other panels talked about impacts on traffic and public safety.
A representative of a Boston-based transportation planning firm, Howard Stein Hudson, said that ways exist to blunt the effects of casino traffic on already congested roads and pointed to mitigations that have been done for the MGM Springfield and other Bay State casinos. Some studies suggest as many as 20,000 people visiting a casino in Bridgeport on a busy weekend.
Another panel also used the Springfield experience to talk about the impact of a casino on public safety.
Andrew Doba, spokesman for MMCT, the joint tribal casino development authority, was asked whether his organization had been invited to the symposium. He replied, “Opponents don’t generally take part in each other’s publicity stunts, and that’s exactly what this was.”
