By Rep. Steve Vaillancourt
I have been receiving so many emails regarding “expanded gambling” that I thought I’d write this generic response for everyone. I trust this clarifies my position and will be sending this to anyone who emails me in the next few weeks.
I agree with many who say they support “expanded gambling”. I have long been an advocate of allowing people to “waste” their money any way they see fit whether it be on an expensive outing to Fenway Park, Patriots Stadium, Waterville Valley, Cannon, or Europe. I don’t buy the argument that expanded gambling will be the ruination of society. While there will undoubtedly be some social costs, I believe these are generally overstated. A dollar lost gambling can never be retrieved any more than a dollar lost rooting for the Red Sox or Patriots can ever be retrieved. Nor am I convinced that crime rates will increase dramatically with expanded gambling. Likewise, although we can argue about the specific revenues the state will derive, I do not deny that the state will receive significant monies from expanded gambling ($150 million a year seems doable to me, but let’s say between $100-200 million).
Now comes the big IF…
Having said all that, I will not be supporting Senate Bill 489, the 40-50 page bill (from Senator D’Allesandro) which will be heard before the Local and Regulated Revenues Committee. The Senate had every opportunity to whip this bill into shape, and it is, in my opinion, fatally flawed, in dozens of specific ways which we may or may not get into at the committee level, but in a couple of general ways which make the bill unacceptable.
The biggest flaw is that this amounts to a state monopoly for private businesses. Worse than that, it amounts to a monopoly for three pre-existing businesses and from the way the bill is worded, quite clearly a fourth business (the proposed Hudson gambling/slots emporium). While this may not technically be in violation of Part 1, Article 10 of the NH Constitution, I believe this state-mandated monopoly is certainly in violation of the spirit of that article (the right of revolution article, ironically enough) which begins, “Government being instituted for the common benefit, protection, and security, of the whole community, and not for the private interest or emolument of any one man, family or class of them;”
Clearly, to me, allowing these six facilities to have a monopoly (albeit for a fee) on gambling (in effect a license to print money) is instituting government for the “interest or emolument” of a certain class of people.
End of argument in my book. If we are to have expanded gambling, the state should either open it up to every interested party (probably not a great idea) or should control the operation itself and keep 100 percent of the profit as we do with alcohol and liquor.
Regarding the state share, the D’Allesandro bill has already lowered the state’s share down to 30 percent (39 percent if you include the numerous dedicated funds, none of which I support–the entire amount the state gets should go into the general fund to be split up during the normal budgetary course of events). Last year, the state’s share was 40 percent (49 percent if you consider the dedicated funds), so we’ve lost 10 percent already. What a way to do business!
My other general concern is with the pervasiveness of this bill. Again, I’m not against people going gambling, but this bill in fact creates three mega-establishments within 25-30 miles of each other. How far is it from Hudson to Salem to Seabrook? Does anyone honestly believe three huge gambling emporiums can exist in such close proximity? Or are these three locations just thrown into the pot to curry votes from legislators in those three areas?
Note that the D’Allesandro bill offers three percent of revenues to the host community. That’s good for Salem, Seabrook and Hudson, but not so good for Manchester and most other cities and towns. Speaking of Manchester, it would be an ideal location for the gambling emporium. We have 700,000 visitors to the Verizon Wireless Arena each year and at least a couple million people flying into the Manchester airport. Certainly Manchester would be a better (maybe even at the Verizon!!) than Salem, Hudson, or Seabrook, but let’s not get into parochial quibbling here other than to note that Manchester needs the revenue more. The median family income for the state (as noted in the most recent education funding data sheets) is $57,575. It’s $50,039 for Manchester; $67,278 for Salem, $71,313 for Hudson!!
While Seabrook’s median income is only $47,718, its equalized property valuation per student is $2,665,548, nearly four times the $685,593 per student in Manchester. Talk about the rich getting richer! This gambling bill certainly does not reward communities which need help the most….So if you’re from Manchester and you’re emailing me to support this bill, think twice because I’ll ask you why Manchester should not get a piece of this expanded gambling action.
I’ll go into just one of a dozen or so less major points here. Section 284-A:8 spells out distribution formula. Again, I do not support dedicated funds, but I have special problems with section 8 (A) which will funnel one percent of revenues from five locations (all except the Hudson one which will “give” to one percent to commuter rail) into the racing and charitable gambling commission for enhancing “live racing purses”. There’s no language as to how this will be split up, so just imagine the fight over this. Will 100 percent go to Rockingham? How much will go to bring back dog racing which the House last week voted by a 69-31 percent margin to end? In effect, what this expanded gambling bill is doing is force feeding a dying industry. We’re going to give millions and millions of dollars to force dogs to race whether people want to watch dog racing or not.
No thanks.
Expanded gambling, by all means!
But not this incarnation!
An op-ed appeared in the March 29th Concord Monitor (sometimes referred to here as Pravda-on-the-Merrimack), penned by the administrative head of all New Hampshire courts, Supreme Court Justice John Broderick, and the administrative heads of the superior, district and probate courts, Bob Lynn, Ed Kelly and David King. The op-ed is about courts in New Hampshire planning to shut down on (so far) three days to address what has become a chronic budget deficit. The following excerpt from the op-ed is problematic:
