Delaware General Assembly Pre-Game Show: Tuesday, March 16, 2010
They’re ba-a-a-a-ck. For three weeks…before they break for Easter. The ‘honorables’ (shout out to Ralph Moyed) return to Dover with expansion of casino gambling apparently at the top of the ‘to-do, or not to-do’ list.
I support expansion beyond the current race-track sites, not b/c I was a strong advocate for casino gambling in the first place, but because the ‘fig leaf’ of using casino gambling to save the horse racing industry always was, and remains a joke. Either you have casino gambling or you don’t. We do, so it only makes sense to open it up to more than a highly-dubious and unworthy monopoly. I ‘get’ the arguments against casino gambling, and I am not unsympathetic, but those arguments were already rejected when the racetracks got gambling. The only debate now is whether casino gambling should be arbitrarily restricted to the racetracks. I see no reason why that should continue to be the case.
But I digress. And that’s because there’s little of interest on today’s agenda.
Once again, the Senate appears to have been completely taken by surprise by the reconvening of session, and its agenda is no agenda.
By contrast, the House has some fairly interesting bills on its agenda. Two of which would fall under the purview of the Insurance Commissioner’s office, aka the purview of the hopelessly inept, if not corrupt, Karen Weldin Stewart:
HB 314 (Rep B. Short) would enable certain types of captive insurance companies to be incorporated in Delaware. While the intent of increasing economic development through fully implementing Delaware’s captive insurance laws is admirable, something about linking ‘Karen Weldin Stewart’ with ‘captive insurance companies’ sets my Spidey Sense to tingling. I hope that this legislation is literally ‘fool-proof’, because we’re dealing with a fool as IC and some unsavory characters actually running the show.
HB 137 (Rep. D. Short) requires the IC to arrange for random audits for small business insurance carriers. Excellent legislation, but be aware that some agencies have histories of ‘ignoring’ mandates like this. It will be up to the General Assembly to make sure that the IC, especially THIS IC, carries out this mandate.
Also on the agenda is Sen. DeLuca’s ill-advised constitutional amendment, SB 60, which would enable the General Assembly to impinge upon the judiciary in determining what offenses bail should not be permitted for. Unfazed by their disastrous excursions into minimum mandatory sentencing, the Socratic Solons, led by Tom Sharp’s spiritual successor DeLuca, want to prove they’re ‘tough on crime’ by using ‘bail conditions’ for campaign fodder. The House should put this piece of crapola out of its misery with dispatch.
Which puts an end to this dispatch with dispatch. Tune in tomorrow for my wrap-up and preview.
Like you, I’m not much of a gambling partisan, but I do think that those who are would be crazy not to get behind an expansion. It is as plain as it gets that Delaware will lose some customers as a result of the MD and PA expansions. But they will gain customers if they expand in Wilmington and at the beach (term used broadly). Some of that gain will absolutely be at the expense of Dover and Harrington specifically. But at the end of the day, you can get all protectionist on this thing and eventually lose those jobs and revenue as MD and PA ramp up or you accept a net gain in jobs and revenues if you expand.
cass–this geographical area is beyond “build it and they will come” mentality. We get a Taj MahOle–after we destroy land sites, and coding zones for more sustainable growth in the job market. Guess, I can look forward to a charter school for gaming after this move. This is a quick high, for when we really need a place for where all those higher ed dollars are going to hire into a dependable economic base of employment of research, innovation, production, creation…..
JC-That’s a false choice. There’s plenty of room at the Riverfront, for example. Much of it in spaces where businesses have already failed. There has been no rush to turn those abandoned businesses into anything. ‘Sustainable growth’ is in no way at risk with two new casinos.
And, do you really think higher ed $$’s are going to go to a ‘charter school for gaming’?
Thanks for the Moyed shout-out. Too bad there’s no one around today who could lick his shoes.
anon wrote:
“Thanks for the Moyed shout-out. Too bad there’s no one around today who could lick his shoes.”
Yup. And Ralph knew & wrote about how much the state was under the thumb of the duPonts and the self-styled Greenville royalty. My favorite News-Journal columnist ever.
And here’s an article from the NYTimes that brings into focus the disparate perspectives of Delaware’s ‘elite’ and Ralph Moyed. I had forgotten all about this:
http://www.nytimes.com/1987/12/13/us/1500-drink-a-toast-to-the-constitution.html?pagewanted=1
Joanne, I really do not have a dog in this casino fight. Except that I think that the state should use revues from these ventures as found money and not count it in yearly budgets. And except that I don’t think that the state should be in the business of helping these venues survive. Given the ramping up of competition around us it looks way too volatile a revenue source. But no one asks us about that. In any event, the report that the casino commission pretty much said you can compete (add venues in Wilmington and “at the beach” or you can see some venues die slowly on the vine. Which just makes sense. If you live in NCCo — do you go to Philly or AC or Dover? My unscientific survey is pretty decisive — no one I know up here will go to Dover for gambling when there are other choices.
And given some of the charter schools I see, it would not surprise me one bit to see someone at the DOE approve a croupier charter school.
Then we’re pretty much on the same page–except history will tell us that gaming revenue will not be treated as escheat funds, and sooner or later a designated revenue stream for some such life sustaining, must have component of the state budget–it won’t be mama’s sugar bowl. Guess I was hoping we would be avoiding that heartache to hit.