AS THE COMMONWEALTH moves closer to a rational, long-overdue expansion of legal gambling, the Patrick administration and the Legislature should not forget about Western Massachusetts.
After decades of dipping our collective toes in the water, it appears the state may make the dive, and with good reason. Poll after poll have shown a significant majority of Massachusetts residents want to see the state expand gambling. Increasing unemployment and plummeting state tax revenues have dramatically underscored the need to add gambling taxes to our revenue mix.
According to the Center for Policy Analysis at UMass-Dartmouth, residents of Massachusetts spent nearly $1 billion at the Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Maine gambling facilities in 2008 and a total of $10 billion since those states began casino and slot parlor gambling. That translates into a loss of billions in tax payments that went to the treasuries of Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Maine and not to the roads, bridges, schools, and public safety needs of Massachusetts.Legalized gambling would allow us way to keep our hard-earned dollars in this state - not in the coffers of our neighbors to the south - and as a badly needed source of jobs, economic development, and tax revenues.
Any plan that creates casino licenses to compete with Connecticut and Rhode Island needs to be sure that one of those licenses goes to a developer committed to building in one of the four counties that make up Western Massachusetts - Berkshire, Hampden, Hampshire, and Franklin. Nowhere in Massachusetts would the construction of a resort casino do so much good; nowhere is a resort casino and the jobs, spin-off business, and revenues it would create more badly needed.
Western Massachusetts needs jobs - the unemployment rate in Hampden County is at 10.3 percent and that of Springfield, the region’s largest city and the one hardest hit statewide by the recession, is near 13 percent.
A broad coalition of elected officials, community groups, business associations and labor leaders is asking that the four counties that comprise Western Massachusetts are not ignored in the final decision on casino siting.
The construction industry, hard-hit by the economic downturn, would see the creation of 1,000 to 1,500 high paying building jobs for each resort casino sited, according to estimates from the Massachusetts Coalition for Jobs and Growth. Casinos would not just create jobs during construction but permanently afterward: Connecticut and Rhode Island have more than 18,000 full-time jobs connected directly to their gaming facilities. And the Massachusetts Coalition estimates that spin-off businesses surrounding and serving new resort casinos could add 3,000 additional full-time jobs.
A world-class destination resort creates the kind of growth that any region would want and is particularly needed in the four counties of Western Massachusetts.
The presence of casinos in Connecticut has spurred the growth of new shopping facilities, new hotel and motel construction and jobs and a host of retail and service businesses.
Any successful suitor for a Western Massachusetts casino license can expect to be told that both the hiring, and the vendor contracts, must be local - and that will add thousands of jobs and millions of dollars in revenue to the region.
Western Massachusetts, with its parks, museums, restaurants, inns, and tourist attractions is a perfect fit for a resort casino to be built as a destination for out of state travelers. Many times when decisions are made in Boston, the long-term view ends at Route 495 or, at most, at the middle of the state. With all that is at stake when the Legislature decides this year where casinos need to be, they should not ignore the region that needs it the most - Western Massachusetts.
Brian Lees is the clerk magistrate of Hampden Superior Court and former state senator from East Longmeadow.
