When word of a Penobscot-Passamaquoddy casino proposal first surfaced early this month, Gov. King’s reaction was a swift and adamant rejection. When tribal attorney Tom Tureen, after a meeting with the governor last week, suggested that the door was open for negotiation, Gov. King’s reaction was a swift and adamant rebuke.

The people of Maine now know the governor’s position on casinos. What they do not know is why he holds that position, why he refuses to even discuss the issue. Being adamant is not good enough.

The governor needs to explain, first and foremost, why the state can operate a lottery but games of chance are off limits to anyone else. Merely asserting that gambling is bad, that it is contrary to the image of Maine he has conjured up for himself and would impose on all others is not good enough. If casino patrons are “suckers,” as he said in his rebuke of Mr. Tureen, what are the Mainers who shove some $140 million a year into the state’s gambling monopoly? It is a monopoly, incidentally, that has expanded considerably under this governor’s administration.

Gov. King would do well to stifle the adamancy for a bit and engage instead in gathering relevant information. He might start with the 1999 report by the congressional National Gambling Impact Study Commission. That report, the result of more than two years of research and expert testimony, found, among other things, that lotteries – weekly and daily number drawings and instant-win games – are perhaps the worst form of gambling going. The odds are long, the payoffs stingy and – especially significant in a state plagued by low incomes – they prey to a shocking degree upon the poor and the poorly educated. Lotteries, researcher Dr. Philip Cook told the commission, are “astonishingly regressive. The tax that is built into the lottery is the most regressive tax we know.” Nationally, Dr. Cook found, lottery players with incomes below $10,000 spend more than any other income group, an estimated $597 per year.

Casinos, the commission found, offer the best odds and highest paybacks in the gaming industry. Tight federal and state regulation has completely eliminated the organized crime influence, accounting is scrupulous and underage gambling is effectively controlled. Further, many states with casinos, commercial or tribal, require controls to prevent ruinous gambling by patrons and also require casinos to fund treatment programs for problem gamblers. Maine’s lottery offers none of those protections.

In his January State of the State address, the governor claimed that everything government does to foster economic development eventually comes down to creating jobs. The lottery creates no jobs. Casinos do. Based upon the data in the commission’s report, the Maine tribes’ estimate of 4,000 jobs with good wages and benefits is realistic. Casinos also pay taxes and, the Commission found, can boost other businesses in the area if sited properly. The lottery does none of that.

Perhaps there are ethical and moral problems associated with gambling, as the governor says. And perhaps there is a point at which personal decisions about ethics and morals become the state’s concern. Why casinos cross that line and the lottery does not is something else the governor should explain. On that, the tribes, the Legislature and the people of Maine should be adamant.