Speaker DiMasi rips governor’s casino proposal

March 3, 2008 03:14 PM Email| Comments (0)| Text size – +

By Globe Staff

House Speaker Salvatore DiMasi said today that Governor Deval Patrick’s plan to license three resort casinos in Massachusetts is "clearly losing credibility" after a Globe analysis found that the administration was "excessively optimistic" in its estimate that the proposal would create 30,000 construction jobs.

“When the Governor embraced casino gambling in September, I raised a number of critical questions I felt needed to be answered before we allowed a casino culture into our Commonwealth,” DiMasi, a longtime critic of casino gambling, said in a press release issued by his office. “To date, most of those questions remain unanswered and, as evidenced by a Boston Globe analysis published on Sunday, new questions are coming to light.”

The Globe story compared Patrick's assumptions with other New England casinos and an industry standard. Gus Faucher, director of macroeconomics for Moody's Economy.com, when asked by the Globe to make an independent analysis, said building three casinos at a cost of $1 billion each in Massachusetts would create a total of 4,000 to 5,000 new construction jobs -- not 30,000. Even a group representing building trade unions -- Patrick's major ally in the casino debate -- said Patrick's projection was 10,000 jobs too high.

In the story Sunday, a spokeswoman for the state economic development secretary said in a statement: "We have confidence in our casino job projections and have hired an independent third-party firm with extensive expertise in the gaming industry to provide an analysis of the governor's plan."

In the statement today, DiMasi ripped the Patrick administration.

"It seems like we have a proposal where no tough questions were even asked -- let alone answered," DiMasi said. "The Governor clearly has the burden of convincing the Legislature that this casino plan should be adopted. So far, the case has not been made, the evidence isn't there and the Governor’s arguments for casinos are clearly losing credibility."