Missouri’s gaming industry started May 27, 1994 in an old Mississippi River Art Deco cruise ship retrofitted to become a casino. Today riverboat casinos cruising at specified boarding times are long gone. The state has 13 casinos that gross .7 billion annually and in two decades have provided .7 billion to Missouri schools. Local communities also have benefited from receiving a percentage of casino revenue taxes, local property taxes, jobs and development.
Roger Stottlemyre, executive director of the Missouri Gaming Commission, said the state’s casinos “are good corporate citizens, who have contributed substantially to home dock cities, and counties and through taxes to education.” He added casino gambling is “a mainstream activity enjoyed and supported by millions of Missourians.” Gambling-related crime has been notably absent in Missouri.
Still, the industry has its detractors, including former state Rep. Herbert Fallert, who filed the original legislation that allowed voters to approve gambling in 1991. “I sponsored it to save tourism for the state of Missouri. It’s different than what I had hoped it would have been. I wish it would have helped the smaller communities. I’m happy that it’s helped the state economic development and it’s helped education. But it turned out to be more of a gaming thing. It kind of got away from us,” Fallert said.
But Mike Winters of the Missouri Gaming Association, which represents casinos, noted, “As any industry continues to age, things are going to change. That’s what we’ve seen. There have been some statutory changes that have allowed the industry to flourish.”
As in many other states, casino revenue is falling in Missouri, due to more regional competition and the recession, which together sent Missouri’s share of casino tax revenue to its lowest number since 2009. Governor Jay Nixon said, “Revenues from lottery and riverboat gaming have continued their steep decline, resulting in an additional estimated shortfall of $35.1 million for the current 2014 fiscal year which ends June 30. These revenue sources are exclusively dedicated to education per Missouri law, and their decrease will directly affect school funding in these final weeks of the fiscal and academic year.”
The state’s portion of the casino tax is 90 percent of the 21 percent tax on gross revenue; all of it goes to education. However, over the past 20 years, the state’s education budget—now more than $300 million annually—does not indicate schools are receiving more than they would have received due to inflation. In addition, casino and lottery taxes make up an increasing portion of the total education budget, increasing from 2 percent in 1995 to 10 percent in recent years. But the education budget as a whole has not been increasing at the same rate. Educators say the “extra” money from the casinos is being offset by reductions in what the state would have spent, and that schools still are underfunded.
Industry critics also point to the nearly 1,000 individuals who voluntarily signed up for a self-exclusion program that originally banned compulsive gamblers from casinos for life. That was changed in 2011, with industry support, to allow those gamblers to apply for re-entry after five years. Most recently the industry lobbied the Missouri legislature to allow patrons to gamble on credit. That measure awaits Nixon’s signature.
