By Doug Dobmeyer
At the end of 2007, unsolved funding issues still exist in Illinois. While the city has addressed theirs with tax and fee hikes, the county and state are still milling around looking for a solution.
The state has implied the only way to solve fixing our roads, bridges and addressing mass transit is to expand gambling in a massive way. The proposed expansion would bring a huge casino of 4,000 positions to Chicago, two more casinos to other areas, the creation of race tracks as mini-casinos with slot machines, and Internet gambling, among other items.
The solution seems to be to move the people living in and visiting Illinois to be individual economic machines producing money to oil the wheels of government. In 1999, when casino gambling started in Illinois, 6.7 million patrons lost an average of $61.97 per visit to a casino. By 2006 (the last year statistics are available), the-then 16.1 million gambling patrons were losing an average of $118.88 per visit. The casinos are doing very well and patrons are not.
Now Illinois wants to exploit that number by increasing the number of the gambling public and how much they lose. Despite a threat of over-saturating the market, they have so little regard for our citizens and visitors the state says they must have more gamblers. Why?
Because the state and local governments get a cut of the action through the taxes they make on casino profits. Chicago wants to take this to an even-higher level by owning their own casino. Instead of protecting people against abuse, the city wants to become “the man” and exploit its citizens and visitors.
Mayor Daley is a smart man. He has leased the Skyway and talks of leasing Midway Airport. He asked for and received a $286 million tax increase this fall. But in his mind, apparently this is not enough and he wants more.
This move comes despite the largest housing foreclosure debacle in this country’s recent history. Chicago now faces more than 200,000 homes in foreclosure. This despite lower-income people are facing much higher costs of living than before. More than 2,300 families depend on a housing subsidy from the city to keep from becoming homeless. These two examples beg the question: Why must our city government press for a casino when the economy is worse for many people expected to become patrons of Casino Chicago?
The Task Force to Oppose Gambling in Chicago has worked with the legislature to find alternatives to their imposing a casino on this city and more throughout the state. It is true we have not contributed a dime to campaign funds. The Illinois casinos and racetracks have given more than $2 million between 2001 and the first half of 2007. More than $155,000 of that money went to the House Gaming Committee.
We haven’t wanted much – just fairness and protection for the people of Illinois and our visiting public. We have even asked for a referendum so you can vote on whether you want major casino expansion in Illinois and to Chicago. But some legislators and the mayor’s chief gambling cheerleader have dismissed that idea as unnecessary. That seems a strange way of saying that democracy is not needed in a democratic republic.
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Doug Dobmeyer is the spokesperson for The Task Force to Oppose Gambling for Chicago, a coalition of religious, civic and neighborhood organizations committed to opposing casino gambling in Chicago founded in 1990.
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See also Daley’s Casino Royale.
Posted on December 24, 2007