Casino Commonwealth

Massachusetts Gaming Commission Chairman Stephen Crosby told a reporter yesterday during a long and rambling interview that the commission is taking a very methodical approach toward casino development here and that he is unruffled by those who claim the commission is moving too slowly.
He once again affirmed his personal belief that if the commission sticks its head in the sand like the ostriches that the ultimate product will be just fine no matter what anyone else is doing.
Crosby said yesterday casinos here will be judged on their impact over decades, not speed.
Again, he repeated his favorite mantra – timing means nothing, time is not of the essence in developing casinos in Massachusetts.
What really matters, he seems to say, is that the absence of speed in arriving at the time when casinos are operating here is somehow going to enhance and increase revenues, new jobs, corollary capital investment and on and on.
It won’t.
Our regional competitors already operating are ramping up their businesses at our expense in an everyday effort to take advantage of the fact that there will not be an operating casino here for at least 3 more years – which is a crying shame for a state treasury that could use a massive infusion of new revenues.
In addition, all this precious time passing by creating just the right casinos here causes bidders to have to spend more and more money in return for less and less revenues to be generated. Less revenues generated translates directly into less new state revenues dumped into the treasury. Fewer jobs will be created than first expected and depended upon.
What Crosby is best at is what he’s busy doing, replicating a casino gambling set-up already functioning in dozens of other states across the nation while at the same time claiming the commission has done a great job spending about $7.5 million in new state expenses on salaries and other necessities to get up and running.
Crosby isn’t alone in setting a slow pace. There is something about casino creation in the minds of many decent people of all ages, races and income levels that defies logical explanation.
In modern China, a city of 100,000 people can be created in six months.
In 12 months, the Massachusetts State Lottery can net $1 billion. Yet it will take until 2016 for the first casino revenues to be produced.
The Massachusetts Lottery last year made available just about $1 billion in aid to the cities and towns. That’s $1 billion in profits without a single casino operating. According to State Treasurer Steve Grossman, the Lottery’s $44.74 billion in sales – an obscenity of the first order – was due to solid business management, new game introduction, strategic marketing and prudent management.
Sounds like everything casino owners and operators would be doing in an instant if given the chance.
There are 7400 Lottery outlets across the state.
Crosby’s crew is going to preside over 3 casinos and one slot parlor. Can we imagine what he’d be attempting if he and his commission were launching the Lottery instead of 3 casinos and a slots parlor?
He’d need a good decade for something like that given his propensity for being careful and worrying about just what will be exactly right for the people of Massachusetts.
A casino is a casino is a casino.
Crosby and his crew can try to dress that up so that a casino is believed to be something righteously, perfectly conceived and built and of greatest benefit to the community where it is located – but it will remain inevitably, irrevocably a casino with all the advantages and disadvantages of expanded gambling. Nothing more. Nothing less.
Massachusetts will have 3 locations the rough equivalent of a Foxwoods, a Mohegan Sun or something like a Las Vegas operation.
Crosby and the commission can take all the time it wants but the end product will not be proven to be remarkably better for all the time taken to conceive. Slower isn’t better in the business world. If Massachusetts were the first state in the nation to allow casino gambling, perhaps this would be a good reason to treat the effort like a moon landing or the creation of an atomic weapon.
The decades future mean far less to the citizens of Massachusetts than the moment at hand right now. Money is worth more now than money in future decades.
And by the way, 2 casino companies in Massachusetts will be applying for a slots license, as reported by the Gaming Commission yesterday.
Mass Gaming & Entertainment and PPE Casino Resorts informed the gaming commission they plan to apply for a slot parlor license.

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Joshua Resnek has been published in the New York Times, the Boston Globe, Boston Magazine and in newspapers and publications all over the world. He received an Emmy Award for investigative reporting in 1996. He is the former vice-president and editor of the Independent Newspaper Group, owners of the Revere Journal, the East Boston Times Free Press, the Everett Independent, North End Regional Review, Beacon Hill Times, Back Bay Sun, Charlestown Patriot-Bridge, Jamaica Plain Gazette, Mission Hill Gazette, Chelsea Record and Lynn Journal.