By  Joseph A. Curtatone

(The opinions and views expressed in the commentaries of The Somerville News belong solely to the authors of those commentaries and do not reflect the views or opinions of The Somerville News, its staff or publishers.)

Just two months back, I wrote an opinion piece for the Somerville News in which I made the case that casino gambling might not be the best route to sustainable economic growth for the state in general and for Metro Boston in particular. I suppose you could say that I was gambling that my friend Governor Patrick was going to, at the very least, take a go-slow approach to the casino question.

I wasn’t trying to draw a line in the sand Рonly to raise some concerns. I pointed out that the two tribal casinos in neighboring Connecticut were located well away from urban areas in order to cut down on some of the costs and social problems that casinos can bring. I pointed out that cities and towns depend on local aid from the state lottery, which was likely to be undercut by casino gambling, and that any change in the state’s gambling policy would have to include some reasonable guarantees that cities and towns wouldn’t be penalized as state gambling revenues were siphoned off in new directions.

tiiBut now the Governor has come down firmly in favor of big-time casino gambling in Massachusetts. Without consulting most municipal officials, his own Local Government Advisory Committee, or the Massachusetts Municipal Association, Governor Patrick has proposed three state-licensed casinos (a Wampanoag tribal casino could mean four in all). Any or all of these could be in urban areas.

The Governor has proposed that the hundreds of millions of dollars in state tax revenues from these casinos be used for two entirely worthy purposes. The first would be providing residential property tax relief Рcities and towns wouldn’t get more aid in order to meet costs without raising taxes; instead the money to would go directly to residential property owners so that they could pay local property taxes as they rose naturally under the structure and restrictions imposed by Proposition 2½. The second would be to help meet the cost of upgrading and maintaining the state’s deteriorating roads and bridges.

As for the costs of coping with gambling addiction, responsible-gambling education, broken families, abandoned children and the local road, public safety and utility infrastructure needed for “destination resort” casinos, the Governor has proposed the creation of state-run trust funds that will dole out money to local (and “adjoining”) communities affected by casino development.

But what will the Governor‚Äôs proposals mean for existing lottery revenues, which are supposed to be redistributed as local aid? The expectation is that lottery revenues will go down as casinos open up  ‚Äì although no one knows by how much ‚Äì with a resulting decline in aid to cities and towns (currently well below pre-2002 levels).

And what effect will the casino proposal have on the chances of the local-option meals and hotel taxes in the Governor’s Municipal Partnership Act (currently bogged down in the legislature)? Will the legislative leadership decide that casino dollars will solve all our problems and reject the need to take a broad-based, long-term approach to reforming local revenue? No one knows.

And what exactly is the definition of an “adjoining” community? In the Metro Boston area, how close to an urban casino does a city or town have to be in order to qualify to seek aid from a state trust fund? Again, no one knows.

In Massachusetts, a state where tourism is already a large part of the economy, will casino gambling draw even more tourists or will it simply reroute and/or divert the ones we already have? As the Boston Globe pointed out last Sunday, some experts are skeptical of locating casinos near urban centers that already serve as major tourist destinations.

To help us answer all of these questions, and to come up with a strategy designed to get cities and towns back to pre-2002 levels of local aid, the Massachusetts Mayors Association is convening this week Рright here in Somerville’s Davis Square. We will be hearing from neutral experts on the impact of casino gambling and we’ll be discussing our options for how best to respond to the Governor’s proposal.

I’m confident that, in the near future, we’ll also hear directly from the Governor or other senior leaders in his administration.

Deval Patrick and Tim Murray campaigned hard on restoring a true partnership between the state and its cities and towns. Right now Рwith the state appearing to retreat on commitments to restore local aid, with rising uncertainty about the promised timelines for urgently needed transit projects and with ominous proposals for “competition” in auto insurance that could sharply raise rates for urbanites and younger drivers Рthat partnership is beginning to look increasingly fragile.
 
Working out a shared approach to answering questions around the local fiscal impacts of casino gambling is essential to maintaining a sense of trust and cooperation between local and state government – both here in Somerville and across the Commonwealth.