"Casino developers charged millions for reviews; Must pay to be inspected" by Mark Arsenault | Globe Staff, June 24, 2013
State gambling investigators have flown around the globe to inspect casino operations in China, studied more than 21,000 pages of background information on casino applicants, and spent $5 million — from the pockets of the gambling industry — in an attempt to weed out casino applicants who lack the personal integrity or financial strength to hold a gambling license in Massachusetts....
I $hould have tried to get on that commission.
The deep dive into the background of company officers, key employees, and investors could result in one or more applicants being bounced from contention for casino development rights, even if they hold gambling licenses in other jurisdictions. Or, more likely, the gambling commission could insist that unsuitable people within the corporation be removed from the project....
They would have that much power?
In what is often called the most regulated industry in the world, even small sins can raise red flags.
Gary Green, a Florida-based casino consultant who has worked for several gambling companies, including Trump Hotels & Casinos, recalled a corporate vice president in the industry once being ruled unsuitable in New Jersey for being 60 days past due on a student loan. He remembers an applicant in Colorado being grilled over speeding tickets. In a cash business with millions of dollars changing hands every day, even an applicant’s personal relationships can be the difference between earning a license and being booted from a project.
They alway$ are.
“The truth is if any of your [applicants] up there know Whitey Bulger, they’re never going to be licensed,” said Green, referring to the Boston mobster on trial in federal court. “It’s just the deal. They can be squeaky clean themselves but it truly is guilt by association.”
Jewish. Wynn, Adelson, Kerzner, you know who they are?
Related: Bulger Jury Speaks
Also see: Bulger’s defense cost taxpayers $2.6m and counting
Hey, that's the price of our $y$tem.
Casino companies must pay for the background checks, and the meter is running....
The total cost of the vetting is expected to be about $9.5 million, according to the commission. The investigations are being performed by State Police, working with teams from two consulting firms, Spectrum Gaming and Michael & Carroll. The consulting teams include former FBI agents and public prosecutors, as well as forensic accountants....
Nice detail!
See: Ex-head of Boston FBI office faces ethics charge
MGM is a huge international company with operations in Macau, China. State investigators will explore the company’s partnership with Hong Kong businesswoman Pansy Ho, whose father is alleged to have ties to organized crime. New Jersey regulators have raised concerns about the partnership, which MGM has strongly defended....
Do Springfield voters know that?
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Related: Sunday Globe Specials: Calling the Casinos
Mixed results for gaming proposals in Mass.
I must admit, I was shocked to see casinos voted down in the city of Springfield.
"Better-off suburbs spurn call of casinos" by Mark Arsenault | Globe Staff, September 12, 2013
Hard Rock International’s failure Tuesday to win the favor of West Springfield voters underscored a hard political lesson: With few exceptions, the Bay State’s relatively affluent suburbs are hostile territory for the gambling industry.
Springfield is affluent? Since when?
Related:
"Perhaps more important to bankers, the city is attracting well-off, if not wealthy residents. Nearly 10 percent of households in Boston earn more than $190,000, placing them in top 5 percent of incomes, according to the census. Among major cities, only San Jose, in the heart of Silicon Valley, San Francisco, New York, and Washington, D.C., have higher concentrations of wealth."
That explains the $lanted pre$$ coverage.
Since the state legalized Las Vegas-style casinos in 2011, cash-flushed developers promising jobs and millions of dollars in benefits have been bum-rushed out of town by Foxborough, Boxborough, Millbury, Tewksbury, and Salisbury. Freetown and Lakeville emphatically joined the anti-casino chorus in nonbinding referenda.
What almost all of these places have in common is a more affluent population.
Please keep this in mind for later.
Estimated median household income among those anticasino communities averages about $75,000, according to the demographic website city-data.com, compared with a statewide average of about $63,000 in 2011.
Among the communities in which voters have approved casinos or slot parlors — Everett, Springfield, Plainville, Raynham, and a nonbinding vote in Taunton — median household income averages about $55,500.
“There is a high negative correlation between the community’s wealth and whether they are going to approve a casino,” said the Rev. Richard McGowan, a Boston College professor and casino expert.
Translation: Wealthy people are not fooli$h enough to gamble.
The key election issue in each municipality, McGowan said, has been jobs: Casinos tend to win where the prospect of casino jobs resonates with voters.
Still have to get a degree.
Residents have yet to decide pending casino referenda in Milford, East Boston, Revere, Leominster, and Palmer. Estimated median household income in those communities is below the state average, according to city-data.com.
“It’s the reverse of what Governor Patrick first suggested, that casinos should be rural destinations,” said Springfield political strategist Anthony Cignoli. “What we’re seeing is hog-strapped cities and towns going for that economic development. They’re saying, it might not be Microsoft or Ford Motor Company coming to town, but if it’s MGM? We’ll take it.”
Or we won't.
MGM has proposed a casino in downtown Springfield, just a few minutes’ drive over the Connecticut River from West Springfield, where Hard Rock pitched its resort. Unlike their neighbors across the river, Springfield voters have strongly endorsed the MGM plan, 58 percent to 42 percent, at a citywide referendum.
Related: Ca$hing Out on Ca$inos: Sarno's Decision
Also see: Springfield voting today on MGM casino plans
“The need for jobs is much greater in Springfield than in West Side,” said Cignoli, using the regional nickname for West Springfield.
Hard Rock, which had planned to build on land leased from the Eastern States Exposition, home of the Big E fair, seemed to take nothing for granted in the West Springfield referendum, spending nearly $1 million on a well-organized political campaign in support of its proposal, including a sophisticated get-out-the vote effort. The company had signed a deal with the city promising to pay at least $18 million annually to West Springfield, as well as tens of millions more in up-front payments for city services and road improvements.
For people who know West Springfield only from sitting in traffic on the way to the Big E, much of the community outside the commercial zones is green and rural, with upscale neighborhoods. Under-funded casino opponents defeated Hard Rock by focusing on whether a casino would threaten that rural character, said Cignoli.
The vote was 55 percent against Hard Rock, 45 percent in favor. Turnout was about 45 percent.
Eastern States Exposition president Eugene J. Cassidy said Hard Rock representatives took the defeat hard. “They were crushed,” he said. “Their staff was in tears.”
You mean West Springfield elite made them cry!
As a whole, West Springfield is an outlier among the anticasino communities, with a median income below the state average. But within the city, Cassidy said, the jobs issue seemed to define the election. “Many of the activists on the ‘no’ side were from the upscale side of town,” he said. “They already have jobs.”
Then Springfield really isn't affluent, is it? Median income below the average?
Of course, we know what city is raising it up high!
West Springfield is also historically resistant to change, which casino opponents exploited with “fear mongering” about the gambling industry, Cassidy said. “Hard Rock is about so much more than gaming, but that message didn’t get out enough.”
Sigh. I'm sick of insults from an agenda-pu$hing pos.
Nathan Bech, a West Springfield resident who led the anti-casino campaign, said the city simply never believed it needed Hard Rock.
“We have good parks and schools and tree-lined streets,” he said. “We’re not in any desperate need of any kind of bailout or influx of cash.”
Why would you want to ruin those with a casino?
West Springfield is the first Bay State community to defeat a casino at a public referendum under the state casino law. Other communities have stonewalled projects at town meeting or through the votes of local selectmen. Opposition was strong enough in Millbury to kill a Rush Street Gaming slot parlor proposal without a vote — the developer withdrew the project three weeks ahead of a planned referendum this month, citing a lack of support. Freetown and Lakeville residents declared their opposition last year to a gambling proposal from the Wampanoag Tribe of Aquinnah, in nonbinding votes requested by the tribe.
Foxborough in 2012 blocked a Wynn Resorts casino plan by electing anticasino candidates to the Board of Selectmen, which persuaded Wynn to give up.
“There are certain communities that are just not going to vote for it,” said McGowan. “And Foxborough is the classic case. Notice what Wynn did. He went to a much poorer community, Everett, where he won the vote because of [a promise to create] jobs there.”
Related:
Everett mayor takes aim at Menino over casino site
Gambling panel stepping into Menino-Wynn spat
Menino, Wynn agree to pact on Everett casino plan
Urban areas in Massachusetts have also blocked casinos, though not at the ballot box. Worcester officials could not reach an agreement with Rush Street Gaming, and negotiations broke down.
Holyoke Mayor Alex Morse pushed an earlier Hard Rock proposal out of his city after he was elected on an anticasino platform. He changed his mind and invited casino developers to make proposals, only to push them out again.
Related: Ca$hing Out on Ca$inos: Holyoke Mayor Folds His Hand
I'm about to do the same.
Plainville and Raynham are potential exceptions to the statewide trends, as casino-supporting suburban towns with above-average wealth. But voters in those communities endorsed slot parlor plans at existing race betting parlors, Plainridge Racecourse and Raynham Park.
Those facilities have worked many years to build local support to add slots.
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Also see: Mohegan Sun inks casino pact with Palmer
I thought they didn't want one.
And Plainville got their $lots, huh?
"Cash flow at Plainridge raised alarm" by Mark Arsenault | Globe Staff, July 25, 2013
State investigators vetting Plainridge Racecourse for a slot parlor license discovered that track president Gary T. Piontkowski made personal cash withdrawals from the struggling track’s money room “almost on a daily basis” for years, a red flag that apparently led to Piontkowski’s abrupt resignation in April.
At the time of Piontkowski’s departure, Plainridge suggested he had retired and sold his stake in the venture due to health concerns. But a report from the investigative arm of the state gambling commission reveals that — after meeting with investigators and reviewing Piontkowski’s conduct — the track’s majority owners “decided that it was not in the company’s best interest to have Piontkowski remain as president,” according to a copy of the report obtained by the Globe....
They are just playing their cards close to the vest.
Multiple efforts to reach Piontkowski, of Rhode Island, were unsuccessful Wednesday. For decades he had been one of the most prominent names in the Massachusetts racing industry. He headed the state racing commission in the early 1990s and later helped found Plainridge, a harness racing track that opened in 1999. He was the charismatic public face of the track’s long effort to win the right to add slot machines, and seemed enormously proud last year when Plainridge became the first applicant to pay the mandatory $400,000 fee to apply for a state casino license.
His abrupt departure in the spring was a shock, coming just months before the commission intended to award the coveted license he had worked years to earn....
The revelations could affect the track’s pursuit of Massachusetts’ sole slot parlor license, which will be awarded through a competition among five well-heeled developers and gambling companies. Each applicant must pass an intensive background check, designed to weed out companies with shaky finances or questionable corporate ethics....
We are talking casinos here!
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Related:
Plainridge track partner says former president Piontkowski ‘pulled a fast one’
Kind of questionable, 'eh?
Mass. denies Plainridge Racecourse’s slots bid
Company in deal to buy Plainridge Racecourse
Also see: The force behind casino hopes at Suffolk Downs
NEXT DAY UPDATE:
Mass. casino developers stress energy conservation
It's a different kind of green, but it's $till a $cam.
