As a pastor in Ridgefield, and head of the Ridgefield Clergy Association, we learned of plans for a casino in the Ridgebury area, under the aegis of a certain Donald J. Trump. I don’t know if we made any difference, but we pastors collectively opposed it. I remain against gambling casinos in our state, despite Connecticut having two of the largest in the world. They do not deliver on their flashy promises, are a regressive tax on the poor, and exploit human addictive weakness.
Perhaps you have heard MGM Resorts continues to push development of a $675 million casino and entertainment complex in Bridgeport harbor. Such a casino will hurt the economy and social fabric of Bridgeport as well as the state of Connecticut. We are going to talk about this on Sunday after church, welcoming our State Representative Terrie Wood and State Senator Robert Duff. All points of view will be respected, of course, but I am open about where I stand. I invite you all to come learn more about this proposed MGM casino, and why it is a bad idea.
As you recall, casino gambling came to Connecticut back in the 1990s, when the Mashantucket Pequots opened Foxwoods and then the Mohegans opened Mohegan Sun on their Indian reservations in southeastern Connecticut. With virtually no competition other than from Atlantic City, Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun quickly became two of the world’s biggest and most profitable casinos, drawing over half their combined customers from out of state, creating 20,000 casino jobs, and sending hundreds of millions of dollars a year in slot machine winnings to the Connecticut state treasury under a revenue sharing arrangement with the state of CT.
Since then, however, the competitive landscape has changed dramatically as more and more states have opened casinos. When Foxwoods opened in 1992 there were only 10 other casinos in the Northeast, all of them in Atlantic City, 250 miles away. Today there are 58 casinos in the Northeast and more are planned or under construction despite the fact that casinos are increasingly cannibalizing one another. As a result of the growing competition, Foxwoods’ and Mohegan Sun’s combined revenue is already down 40% from its peak and the two casinos have eliminated over 8,000 jobs. Whether you are for or against casino gambling, this much is true: the gambling market is fully saturated. New casinos will essentially squeeze blood from a stone.
In July, 2017 the State of Connecticut authorized the Mashantucket Pequots and Mohegans to jointly open a $300 million commercial, off-reservation casino in East Windsor to compete with the new $950 million mega-casino MGM is building in Springfield, MA. The East Windsor casino faces two obstacles before it can go forward. First, our legislature approved the East Windsor casino with the proviso that the U.S. Department of the Interior approve an amendment to the current state-tribal compacts stipulating that the new casino would not alter the current compact terms giving tribes the exclusive right to operate casino gambling in Connecticut in return for 25% of their slot revenues. The Department of the Interior hasn’t yet approved this amendment. Instead, they recently issued a confusing letter neither approving nor rejecting it.
Second, MGM has challenged the constitutionality of giving the tribes the exclusive right to build a commercial casino in Connecticut, and has proposed that, as an alternative, the state allow MGM to build a $675 casino in Bridgeport to tap the Fairfield County and New York markets. MGM claims the Bridgeport casino would generate more net revenue and jobs for the state than the East Windsor casino, and is threatening to hold up the East Windsor casino indefinitely in court while it presses its Bridgeport proposal. This is the context and background.
So much money is at play here, we might not have a shot to prevent it. But I can’t stand idly by.