Casinos and state control

Monday’s hearings on the Passamaquoddy Tribe’s proposal to build a casino and hotel complex in Calais did two things.

It clarified the arguments.

Sen. Harry Vose of Eastport, Rep. Joseph Driscoll of Calais and Rep. George Townsend of Eastport are familiar with the depressed economic turf in Washington County, where Rep. Driscoll’s home town has lost 200 full-time jobs in the past two years. The casino could employ directly as many as 700 people, with a payroll of $5 million to $10 million.

Rep. Townsend believes his city’s rejuvenated port complex will get a boost from cruise ships docking to make a Calais connection. Similar spin-off developments could ripple through the region.

Those expectations are reasonable.

On the down side, articulated by Attorney General Michael Carpenter and Public Safety Commissioner John Atwood, are the casino’s connection to organized crime through its management and suppliers of video gambling and slot machines, the lack of effective state oversight of its operation, and the proliferation of casinos if the Calais project goes through.

The concerns of the law-enforcement community also are reasonable, and they raise the question that the Legislature must answer: Given what Maine knows about the potential for such a project to spawn criminal activity and for legitimate tribal earnings to be siphoned off by crime families, can this project be done cleanly, and right?

The hearing identified the key to make this happen: the state-tribal compact.

Maine can regulate the number of casinos by negotiating a limit on development. The Passamaquoddies already have agreed that for them, Calais will be it.

The state should assert itself on the issue of crime control. State government has a public safety obligation to all its citizens. The tribe must recognize that. The casino operation, and its extended business connections must be squeaky clean. The tribe should want that for itself. The state should insist upon it. Without such assurances, this project should be unacceptable, to the state and the tribe.

The Legislature’s decision on the casino proposal does not have to be a choice between welfare and the mob, pitting Washington County’s chronic poverty against the possibility of encroachment by organized crime.

If the tribe has the capacity to compromise and the state has the determination to see that this project is controlled and kept clean, the tribe, the region and the state all can win.