Patrick fights odds on casinos
Tells panel he is open to compromise as speaker calls proposal unconvincing
Governor Deval Patrick, appearing at a long-awaited hearing on his landmark casino proposal, mounted a last-ditch effort yesterday to stave off a major defeat, pleading with lawmakers to change, not kill, his plan to boost the economy with legalized gambling.
"I have no illusions about the plans in the House for this legislation," Patrick said during a standing-room-only hearing at the State House on legislation headed to a committee vote today. "I am simply asking that an open debate begin, rather than end, today."
He exhorted legislators to change his plan, to debate it fully, to suggest ways to use the resulting revenue, anything that would keep the casino option on the table.
It was a day the Patrick administration has been anticipating for six months, but having arrived, might have wished had never come. First thing in the morning, hours before the hearing was gaveled to order, House Speaker Salvatore F. DiMasi essentially declared Patrick's plan dead.
"Right now, my answer is no," DiMasi told a breakfast meeting of the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce.
In his strongest rebuke of Patrick's plan to date, he disparaged the governor's job projections and revenue estimates and then attacked it in on broad moral grounds.
"Casinos will absolutely cause human damage on a grand scale," DiMasi said during his 30-minute chamber address. "After six months of debate on this bill, I believe this evidence is not there, the case has not been made, and time is running out."
It was a day full of dramatic events. Last night, while the hearing was still going on downstairs, DiMasi continued to work against the proposal by calling individual committeee members into his office to try to influence their votes, said Representative Richard Ross, a Wrentham Republican, who was unpersuaded.
Earlier, the State House and Boston Common outside were overtaken in a circuslike atmosphere not seen since last year's debate on a proposal to ban same-sex marriage. Hundreds of people on both sides of the issue filled Gardner Auditorium.
Teacher and labor unions said they supported it for the 20,000 permanent jobs Patrick has promised casinos would bring. Environmentalists opposed it by arguing that traffic and greenhouse gas emissions would increase. Poker players opposed it because the legislation includes a provision to make online poker illegal.
The governor has sought to translate popular support for casino gambling into legislative votes, but he has repeatedly been blocked by DiMasi.
Over the last week, DiMasi has made a concerted push to stifle the governor's casino legislation, calling legislators into his office and convinced some of them to alter their stances in an effort to not only win the debate, but to win it decisively to demonstrate his ability to hand the governor a strong defeat on an important issue. Patrick countered again yesterday, trying to rally enough supporters to buck DiMasi before tomorrow, when the full House is expected to vote on the casino legislation.
During his hourlong appearance before the Joint Committee on Economic Development and Emerging Technologies, Patrick emphasized that he was open to compromise and wanted to work with legislators.
"If you have a better idea about where to dedicate the revenues, what is it?" he said. "Let's work together on whatever your ideas are. I believe that the people of Massachusetts expect more from us than they are getting."
After more than 12 hours of testimony, talk turned to parliamentary tactics. The committee is expected to vote by noon today and send the issue to the full House as early as tomorrow, with either a positive or negative recommendation. Traditionally, a committee vote carries great weight on the floor.
Patrick and his staff were asking members of the committee, even if they opposed the casino plan and planned to vote against it on the House floor, to vote it out of committee with a favorable recommendation, to guarantee a debate on the merits before the full chamber.
An adverse report would mean supporters in the full House would have to first win a vote overturning the committee's negative vote, before a full debate on the merits could take place.
The pleas appeared to be swaying some committee members, and some lawmakers said the 19-member panel was almost evenly divided.
"We agree the bill is flawed, but it needs to go to the floor, so we can debate it and amend it," said Representative Brad Hill, an Ipswich Republican who opposes the governor's legislation, but plans to vote for sending it out of committee favorably.
DiMasi, after making a largely symbolic visit to oversee the committee hearings late last night after most had left the room, said there was little room for changes in the governor's legislation.
"If he thinks his bill isn't in the best form possible, he should have said that a little while ago," he told reporters after listening to about 15 minutes of testimony.
Patrick rolled out a potent political weapon as he sought to salvage his bill: organized labor. Appearing on the Common in the morning, he addressed a crowd of about 200 union workers who were wearing sweat shirts and yellow, blue, and brown hard hats, and carrying signs saying, "Casinos equal 20,000 jobs for Massachusetts, and I need one of them."
Robert Haynes, Massachusetts president of the AFL-CIO, urged his members in an expletive-laden address to attend the hearing and push their state lawmakers to back Patrick's proposal.
"I want to know which legislator is going to deny you a job, who's going to pay your mortgage when you can't pay, who's going to leave 20,000 workers in an unemployment line," Haynes said.
In the hearing room later, Representative Daniel E. Bosley, the committee's House chairman, tweaked the governor for his criticism that DiMasi was using aggressive tactics.
"When you bring people in, it's educational, when we bring people in, it's arm-twisting," Bosley told Patrick.
"It's all about the substance," Patrick replied.
Matt Viser can be reached at maviser@globe.com. 