A report by the international City/County Management Association (ICMA) report on U.S. gaming concludes that communities that have Indian casinos often see an upturn in their economies.
A state that has seen this effect first hand is Arizona, where the voters legalized Indian gaming inn 2002.
According to the report, a small economic boom is usually followed by a stable economy for towns that host new casinos. The growth spurt is temporary, but the economy generally doesn’t shrink back down afterwards.
The study showed that gaming revenue between 1997 and 2008 was as much as 2.5 percent of state revenues and that jobs creation not associated with casino picked up in areas that had new casinos because of new people moving into the area.
The study also found that gaming tends to dig in once it has arrived and if a casino does move out of town, the economy tends to suffer as a result. Reno, Nevada is an example. Since gaming has grown all over the state, the city, which for many years tied itself to gaming, has seen those revenues drop as a result. This has forced the city to reinvent itself to a degree to maintain its viability as a tourist attraction.
Other studies have shown that Indian gaming has created 650,000 jobs across the United States, 15,000 of them in Arizona. In that state, for the first time since it was introduced in 2004, tribal gaming revenues shared with the state reached $1 billion. The money that is contributed to the state is used for education, emergency services, wildlife and habitat conservation, tourism and the treatment and prevention of problem gaming. These monies are 5 to 10 percent of the budget of some emergency services providers.
