Casino tax revenues in saturated gambling markets such as Connecticut, Delaware, and New Jersey have been falling every year since peaking in 2007. These declines have accelerated even as the economy has begun to recover over the past year. February slots numbers at Connecticut's Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun are in free fall, down by 24 and 19 percent.

Facing market saturation and cannibalization from proliferating casinos in Maryland, New York, Ohio, and Delaware, even Pennsylvania's casino revenues are now dropping. Pennsylvania suffered an 11.5 percent year-over-year drop in February revenues from its nine casinos with multi-year operating histories.

Even Millennium Gaming -- the Las Vegas Company working to engineer a budget crisis to ram its Salem slots barn monopoly through the legislature - is not immune. Millennium's Meadows casino near Pittsburgh suffered a 14 percent February slots revenue drop.

And Millennium can't blame the weather for the Pennsylvania downtrend. Check the six-month revenue drops in the right column below:

Casino market saturated, declining

The factors causing these declines include:

• The constantly proliferating number of casinos and slots barns throughout the Northeast. Fifteen will surround New Hampshire, once Massachusetts' four come online.
• The aging-out of gamblers interested in sitting for hours at a time pressing slot machine buttons every four seconds.
• And Internet gambling - now legal in Delaware, Nevada, and New Jersey - is about to decimate the brick-and-mortar casino business model, just as Internet retailing has done to chain bookstores, office supply, and electronics retailers.

Insanity: building NH's budget on casino money

Albert Einstein's definition of insanity:

Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

Anyone who can read numbers can see the results in the states around us: declining casino revenues, statewide proliferation of tacky slots barns, legislative capture by the gambling lobby, and taxpayer bailouts of failing casinos in Delaware, West Virginia, New Jersey, and now Connecticut.

We urge the House to vote down SB152 - the Salem slots barn monopoly bill - because casino money won't fix the budget for three reasons:

Reason One:

The $80 million in promised casino license money won't be released from escrow for at least two years because ALL these steps must first be completed: 

1. Adopt casino regulations and regulatory apparatus. The Governor's Gaming Study Commission found NH's gambling regulations to be weak and warned against legalizing casinos until the state completed a top to bottom upgrade of its gambling regulations.
2. Set up casino license bidding criteria allowing sufficient time and transparency.
3. Select among competing casino license bidders, using an open, transparent process.
4. Complete background checks on casino management and investors. NH Attorneys General from both parties have repeatedly testified to the legislature that this process requires one full year to avoid risk of corruption and criminal influence.
5. Local referendum; local planning, zoning, and infrastructure approvals. Proposed casinos are large and have both local and regional cost impacts on schools, highways, public safety services, and social services (due to prevailing low-wage casino jobs). History lesson: it took Merrimack Premium Outlets eight years to get opened.
6. Conclude litigation and appeals. The NH slot machine monopoly in SB152 has a net present value exceeding $200 million. Prospective casino developers in Loudon and Hudson have already testified to the Senate that the SB152 bidding process is rushed and biased toward Millennium. Case in point: last month, Nashua-based Law Warehouses filed suit against the State Liquor Commission over its award of a $200 million sole-source liquor distribution contract to a competitor, charging the Liquor Commission with using "biased and unlawful practices" in making the award. 

Reason Two:

The single available independent economic analysis of SB152 from the NH Center for Public Policy Studies found that the proposed Salem casino would have a net negative economic impact on our state.

Reason Three:

As noted above, casinos and casino taxes are in accelerating secular decline. It is reckless and irresponsible to build a state budget and to make specific program funding promises on an obviously unstable and declining revenue stream.

SB152 Informational Lunch for Legislators

If you are even considering voting for SB152, you owe it to yourself and to your constituents to learn more and not to be pressured into an egregious budget mistake.

When: Session break, this Wednesday

Where: Holiday Inn ballroom, diagonally across from the State House

Speakers:

Phil McLaughlin, Democrat, former NH Attorney General

Steve Duprey, hospitality leader, former GOP state party chair

Lew Feldstein, Democrat, member Governor's Gaming Study Commission

Marjorie Smith, Democrat, Durham Representative

Regards,
Jim Rubens, Chair