This study commission — created when the GA and the Governor decided to help improve the balance sheets of our local casinos who are being hurt by rising costs (who isn’t, really?) and by a failed competitive stance in a market where we are surrounded by a glut of gaming options. This Commission met for the first time on Tuesday — and tell me if you can spot why I think the fix is in:
The nine-person commission consists of legislators from both sides of the aisle, a member from the Delaware State Chamber of Commerce, Delaware’s Secretary of Finance Tom Cook, and Alan Levin, director of the Delaware Economic Development Office.
“Our goal has got to be to be able to ensure that we can give the casinos the right tools to stay competitive in this environment,” said Secretary Cook, chairman of the commission.
OK, that was too easy, but Why Oh Why are *we* giving “casinos the right tools to stay competitive in this environment”? Not one of these people runs a casino or has any casino expertise. But if you look closely at this group, they do have the expertise to ensure that an industry that can’t figure out how to make enough money for its shareholders can get there using your tax dollars. And there’s more:
The purpose of the commission is to discuss the marketplace both in-state and out-of-state, as well as various marketing efforts and the revenue distribution to video lottery, sports lottery, table games and internet gaming.
“If we were just to sit on our hands and not do anything, there would be a number of people in the state’s economy that would be affected,” Secretary Cook said.
You don’t have to sit on your hands — just get out of the way. Let a few other venues open up in more geographically competitive areas in the state and let the market sort it out. This is also way easier than living through this group of Study Commissioners going through the motions of studying in order to pronounce the pre-ordained solution of giving casinos more money. But when the fix is in, the fix is in. Senator Bushweller weighed in on this in today’s NJ — via Delaware Voice column (no link as of this writing) — making the argument that the revenue share on casinos was raised as part of a larger scale effort to triage the State’s budget during the crash. He claims that all of the drastic revenue raisers have been largely restored, noting that:
We restored the 2.5 percent employee pay cut and then, in addition to that, gave the employees two raises totaling 3 percent.
Is this true?
In any event, Bushweller wants to make the case that since the state has largely normalized the cuts and revenue raisers, it should do so now for the casinos. Because 1500 jobs depend on it. He forgets to make the case that having the state protect a monopoly has some value, and taxpayers should get that value.
He does ignore that those 1500 jobs depend *more* on their employers being able to compete in a market that they had more than adequate time to accommodate. How will these casinos benefit if/when internet gaming comes on line? There’s alot of questions about this, and it seems that we should know what the financial deal is here before rushing to throw more money at casinos. But protecting jobs in an industry whose client base has been reduced (but not completely gone) doesn’t make any sense. Because if revenues don’t support these jobs now, they won’t be there for very long in the future — no matter how much state money is on the table.
There are plenty of problems in the State of Delaware that could use some focused attention. How about making sure that public schools work? We’ve spent a good deal of time making sure that charters have carved out a privileged space to operate in, how about spending time on those schools where the rest of Delaware’s children go to? Or how about some focused attention on making sure that the Port of Wilmington has what it needs to keep its clients AND can accommodate future expansion? Both public schools and the Port have the advantage of being public assets, so State oversight, planning and management adjustments is well within their own purview. But here we are — getting ready to throw money at an industry that isn’t going to operate at previous peaks.