BOSTON—House lawmakers debated a bill Tuesday to license two resort-style casinos in Massachusetts and allow up to 3,000 slot machines at the state's four race tracks, the second time in just over two years that the House has weighed a dramatic expansion of gambling in the state.
After an impassioned 11-hour debate, House lawmakers broke for the evening. Debate will resume Wednesday.
The bill was filed by Democratic Speaker Robert DeLeo, who is trying to persuade House lawmakers who two years ago voted overwhelmingly to defeat Gov. Deval Patrick's casino bill, which called for three casinos but no racetrack slots, to support his proposal.
Lawmakers beat back a Republican-led effort to put the four slots-only contracts out for competitive bids rather than giving them to the tracks. An amendment to send the bill back to committee to allow a public hearing on the legislation was also defeated early in the debate.
DeLeo is hoping for a two-thirds vote on the bill, or 106 votes, to withstand a potential veto by Patrick, who opposes slot machines at the race tracks. Patrick has not said whether he would veto the bill.
Rep. Brian Dempsey, House chairman of the Committee on Economic Development Committee, said allowing the casinos and slot machines will help the state recapture up to half of the money spent by Massachusetts residents at casinos in neighboring states.
"We need to have the product here in Massachusetts that's going to be competitive with Connecticut and Rhode Island," said Dempsey, D-Haverhill.
But opponents said the casinos would lead to ruined lives, including a spike in suicides.
"By determining how we will site these casinos, we are literally discussing who will live and who will die," said Rep. Ruth Balser, D-Newton.
Dempsey said the bill sets aside funding for gambling addiction programs.
He defended the decision by House leaders to commission an updated version of a 2008 economic study of Patrick's three-casino bill. Dempsey said that while the two bills are different, the study showed "a very strong marketplace" for casino gambling in New England.
Critics say House leaders should have commissioned an independent fiscal review of DeLeo's bill that looked both at the revenues and potential costs of allowing casinos in Massachusetts, both in social costs like divorces and bankruptcies and the effects on local businesses and performing arts centers.
Opponents also say the promise of a revenue windfall and thousands of good-paying jobs is overblown. House leaders say the bill will generate between $300 million and $500 million in added tax revenues each year and create up to 19,000 jobs.
Rep. Denise Provost quoted another study that found that while the introduction of casinos adds jobs, the populations of the communities where they are built also rise due to an influx of job seekers.
"People will move in from other places to get those jobs and they will get them," said Provost, D-Somerville.
Casino opponents also criticized the process by which the House intended to debate the bill, with some amendments being bundled together and then voted on.
During the debate, lawmakers rejected a series of amendments designed to curb addictive gambling, including placing warning labels on all casino marketing materials and barring casinos from pumping pheromones into the air to encourage casino patrons to keep gambling.
Rep. Cory Atkins sponsored the pheromone amendment saying casino patrons should know if the air they are breathing is being artificially spiked with chemicals or if casinos are pumping in extra oxygen to make patrons feel more energized to keep gambling.
"When you're feeling like a millions bucks, you don't mind betting a million bucks," said Atkins, D-Concord.
Other failed amendments would have set a $500 limit on how much an individual can lose in a single day, prohibited the use of so-called casino "luck ambassadors" to urge people to return to slot machines as they are heading to the exit doors, and required a public health official to intervene if someone has continued betting for more than 12 hours at a time.
A handful of amendments adopted by lawmakers would require the purchase of domestically made slot machines and allow people to put themselves on a "do not contact" list to prevent them from receiving marketing materials from casinos.
Under DeLeo's proposal, all the revenues from the racetrack slots, up to $100 million a year, would be returned to cities and towns as local aid. Two of the state's racetracks are located in the Winthrop Democrat's district. The state's two dog tracks have struggled since Massachusetts voters opted to ban live dog racing.
The bill requires a $500 million private investment from each of the resort casinos and $75 million from each of the race tracks and would deliver $260 million in upfront licensing fees to the state.
The lure of casinos has drawn millions in lobbying dollars to Massachusetts.
The amount spent by firms, unions and interest groups hoping to influence the debate has grown from just more than $800,000 in 2006 to more than $2 million in 2009, according to an Associated Press review of records filed with the Secretary of State's Office.
The vast majority of the lobbying dollars are being spent by groups hoping to get a piece of the gambling pie if lawmakers ultimately vote to expand gaming.
