The Speaker of the Connecticut House Joe Aresimowicz last week said that the fate of a third casino is likely to be decided during budget talks.
He said “the casino itself will be part of the budget solution.” That was a sufficiently ambiguous statement to leave open whether the decision would favor the state’s two gaming tribes, the Pequots and the Mohegans, or those, like the tribes’ chief adversary MGM Resorts, which wants to stop them from getting a tribal monopoly by opening up the bidding process to commercial developers, such as itself.
The tribes last week expressed optimism and bused in 35 workers from their two casinos to lobby for their bill. The workers asked lawmakers to help save their jobs.
They were joined by Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Chairman Rodney Butler and Mohegan Tribal Chairman Kevin Brown. Between them the casinos employ 9,000, many of which are threatened by the 2018 opening of the MGM Springfield in about 18 months.
The purpose of the third, satellite casino, which would be placed in East Windsor, near the Connecticut-Massachusetts state line, is to blunt the effects of the $950 million Springfield casino by hopefully capturing some of those players before they make the trip.
The tribes were buoyed by a vote that residents of East Windsor took last week backing up their Board of Selectmen’s agreement with MMCT Venture, the development arm of the two tribes to build a casino in the new defunct Showcase Cinema. Opponents of the casino forced a town meeting and vote on an unwilling board, and then lost the vote: 198 to 112.
Residents debated an ordinance that, if adopted, would have made the casino impossible by requiring a minimum distance between a casino and a state-licensed residential treatment facility.
One opponent who favored the ordinance had argued: “Do we really want a gaming facility within a 10-minute walk of a facility that currently provides mental health and addiction support?”
Town Counsel Joshua Hawks-Ladd said that in his judgment the ordinance was illegal and would invite lawsuits.
After the vote First Selectman Robert Maynard said, “This is good. Now it is up to the legislature to decide.”
Chairman Brown greeted the vote cheerfully, stating “As we enter the last month of session, it’s clear there is growing momentum behind our project,” and adding, “Just last week, the town of East Windsor overwhelmingly reiterated their support for our proposed facility. Now we have only our bill and a competing proposal that will cost the state millions in tax revenue. The choice is clear. And the time to act is now.”
Chairman Butler added, “We’ve said from the beginning that we want to help the state we have called home for centuries. With the state’s finances taking a turn for the worse, it’s now more important than ever that we rally around our employees and fight to save Connecticut jobs.”
The tribal-favored bill got some powerful ammunition over its rival bill that MGM wants when Dr. Clyde Barrow, an expert in New England gaming, published a study that projected that the process called for in the latter bill would cost the state $85.6 million in revenue since it would bust open the tribal state gaming compact with the tribes that, in return for exclusivity for the tribes, guarantees 25 percent of the profits for the state. In the nearly two decades since Foxwoods and the Mohegan Sun opened the tribes have paid the state more than $7 billion.
Prompted by concerns from the state attorney general that granting the tribes the right to operate a commercial casino might violate the compact the tribes promised to guarantee to pay the 25 percent.
The tribal chairman issued a joint statement that said: “With the development of a third casino operated jointly by Mohegan and Pequot, we are committed to guaranteeing our existing slot revenue arrangement with the state and are proposing compact amendments that will ensure those revenue streams are preserved,” and added “SB 957 does not jeopardize this revenue sharing, because it is expressly conditioned on approval of the tribes’ proposed compact amendments.”
