A ballot measure that would allow the voters of Massachusetts to approve of a second Bay State slots parlor has been certified for the November ballot by the Supreme Judicial Court, which rejected a claim by those trying to get it disqualified.
The slots parlor would be located in Suffolk Downs racetrack.
In the case Bogertman v. Attorney General the court rejected the claim that the imitative be disqualified under the state constitution’s “local matters exclusion.” The court declared, “The initiative petition does not run afoul of the local matters exclusion where the second slots parlor license it proposes could potentially be awarded to a site in many localities, even if it were most likely that it would be awarded to a site near Suffolk Downs.”
The gaming expansion act of 2011 authorized one slots parlor in the state. The license for that was issued to Plainridge Park Casino in Plainville, which is operated by Penn National Gaming. The casino opened a year ago.
The initiative is being proposed by developer Eugene McCain through his Horse Racing Jobs And Education Committee. It specifies that the slots parlor would only be allowed on land within 1,500 of a racetrack. Suffolk Downs fits the description, but so do several others, according to the court.
In a statement McCain said, “Our goal is to give the citizens of Massachusetts the opportunity to express their support for one additional slots parlor during this November’s election. Approval by the citizens this fall will enable an enterprise that will create many jobs, provide substantial additional tax revenues for education in the Commonwealth and bring funds to the Massachusetts horseracing tradition.”
Besides a slots parlor McCain would like to build a hotel.
In its ruling the court noted that some other developer besides McCain could apply for the license and that such a casino could also be located near existing racetracks in Brockton and Plainville.
Chief Justice Gants wrote, “It may well be true that this petition was motivated by one person’s desire to profit from the Commonwealth’s developing gaming industry based on his ownership interest in a particular property.” He added, “But our focus in deciding whether an initiative petition reaches the voters must be on the actual law proposed by the petition and not on the motives that may lie behind it.”
Celeste Myers, one of those who sued to try to stop the initiative, commented, “Obviously, we’ll do what we can to oppose this initiative,” Myers said. “We anticipate there will be a pretty robust campaign on behalf of the proponents, and we hope to meet that.” Noting that McCain would, in addition to persuading the voters of the state, need to also win a local election, Myers added, “He has long road ahead of him, and it’s not going to be unopposed.”
First Light Resorts & Casino
Although a major funder for the lawsuit challenging the Bureau of Indian Affairs decision to put land into trust in Taunton for the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe of Massachusetts stopped sending money in April, Michelle Littlefield, a resident of Taunton, is moving forward with her lawsuit to stop the tribe from building its First Light Resort and Casino.
The tribe held a groundbreaking for the casino in April, just about the time that the opponents lost their major source of funding, Rush Street Gaming, the owners of a commercial casino developing firm that had hoped to prevent the tribe from building.
The Mashpees appear to be taking the legal challenge in stride, and say they will open its resort casino next summer.
Littlefield is not buying it. Littlefield, interviewed by the Boston Globe, declared last week, “The casino will never be built. It just won’t.”
Littlefield but not the tribe will get her day in court on July 11. The tribe isn’t even named in the lawsuit, whose defendant is the Department of the Interior itself. The complaint is based on the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision of 2009: Carcieri v. Salazar, which says that tribes cannot put land into trust unless they were “under federal jurisdiction” in 1934 as spelled out by the Indian Reorganization Act of that year.. That would seem to preclude the Mashpees, who gained recognition in 2008. However, the BIA argues that the tribe was living on a reservation in that year—and thus qualify.
Despite funding the lawsuit on a shoestring, Littlefield says confidently: “I’m looking forward to five years from now, when everyone is talking about the Littlefield decision.”
