Pricey casino debate fires Maine emotions

loading...

SANFORD – If there were ever any doubt about the intensity of the debate over a proposed Indian casino in Maine, one needed to look no farther than Carol Cabana’s front lawn.

The Sanford woman and self-professed political junkie has displayed lawn signs in her yard just about every election season.

Never – that is until she put a CasinosNo! sign at the end of her driveway – has anyone set fire to one.

“The wire was still there, but the sign was gone,” Cabana, 56, said in a telephone interview this week after her story made the front page of the local weekly newspaper. “It’s been fairly intense.”

On Nov. 4, Cabana, the unknown person who torched her plastic sign, and the rest of Maine voters will go to the polls to decide whether to allow the Penobscot Nation and Passamaquoddy Tribe to open a casino if part of the revenue goes to the state.

With less than three weeks to go, voters are split on Question 3, with the anti-casino movement gaining ground in recent weeks and even leading in some polls.

Statewide, the debate over the casino might not be quite as fierce as it is in this former textile mill town, where police say neither side has been immune from having their signs disappear from the roadside.

Besides being a hotbed for pre-election high jinks, Sanford is the proposed site for the $650 million casino resort, which promises to employ more than 4,500 people after an estimated 2,000 construction workers finish the project in 2005.

“This is the biggest economic opportunity the state has seen in 30 years,” said Tom Tureen, a Portland attorney driving the pro-casino effort.

Outside a recent job fair that attracted hundreds of people to Sanford, Tureen pulled out his laptop to preview the latest television ad from the political action committee Think About It, which has spent a staggering $4.7 million thus far to advance its pro-casino message.

The ad, which began airing this week, is meant to counter a CasinosNo! spot asserting that “Maine gets nothing” from most of the casino operations and only 25 percent from the slot machines.

According to casino supporters, however, slot machines typically make up about 80 percent of a casino’s revenue, and 25 percent of that would be around $100 million. That is more than the $91 million in corporate income tax paid by all the other businesses in the state combined, the commercial contends.

“That’s a whole lot of nothing,” scoffed the narrator before Tureen closed his Apple notebook and chided the opposition for spreading misinformation.

“No matter how many times they lie, it doesn’t make it true,” said Tureen, a pivotal player in the creation of the Foxwoods Resort Casino in Ledyard, Conn. Twice the size of the proposed Maine casino, Foxwoods pumps $200 million into that state’s general fund every year.

Opponents say the $100 million, even if accurate, would not begin to cover the impacts of the Maine casino, which they predict will bring increased crime, traffic and a host of social ills including bankruptcies, divorces, gambling addiction and suicide.

And emotions are running high, particularly in York County.

No love lost

Inside CasinosNo! headquarters in Sanford last week, one volunteer described how her 9-year-old son was having nightmares about the casino, fearing he would be struck by a drunk driver while playing in the yard.

“Probably not too far off,” responded CasinosNo! spokesman Dennis Bailey, whose group has raised more than $2 million so far to combat the casino, making this referendum the most expensive in Maine history.

By and large, Bailey’s arguments against the casino tend to be more economic than emotional, more legal than moral.

But the former aide to Gov. Angus King – also a staunch casino opponent – doesn’t mind getting nostalgic to advance his cause, invoking images of Maine’s proud but fading manufacturing past.

“It’s pretty sad we’re going from a state that had papermakers and shipbuilders to what?” asked Bailey. “Card dealers? We can do better than that.”

There’s no love lost between Bailey and Tureen’s colleague Erin Lehane, who is quick to defend the jobs the casino will offer – the average pay for which would be around $31,000. She issues almost daily challenges to critics to come up with a better plan.”We lead the country in job losses, and it’s time to start turning this around,” Lehane said, referring to a recent study showing Maine with a worst-in-the-nation 22 percent drop in manufacturing jobs since 2000.

Lehane, who has become the public face of Think About It, paints the debate as one between classes – Maine’s wealthy southern coast versus its working class interior. Her group’s polling shows far greater support for a casino among lifelong Maine residents than those who have lived in the state for less than five years.

“If you can see the ocean from your window, you’re opposed,” Lehane once told the Associated Press.

Just as anti-casino forces pan Think About It for receiving all its money from the project’s Las Vegas developer, Marnell Corrao Associates, Lehane characterizes the opposition’s financiers as “out-of state millionaires” and businesses seeking to hold onto an inexpensive work force.

While Lehane questions the motives of critics such as L.L. Bean and credit card giant MBNA – both of whom have given hundreds of thousands of dollars to CasinosNo! – they are hardly alone in their opposition.

Most notably, the anti-casino contingent includes Gov. John Baldacci, who instead touts his Pine Tree Opportunity Zones as an alternative that would provide tax incentives to employers creating jobs in economically depressed areas of the state.

However it improves its business climate, Maine has little choice but to diversify, considering the nationwide decline in manufacturing jobs, according to John Hanson, director of the University of Maine’s Bureau of Labor Education. He added that, like it or not, casino gambling has proven a sustainable industry elsewhere in the country.

“I’d be the first to say that in terms of economic development there would be alternatives preferable to a casino,” Hanson said.

“But … I watch those buses going to Connecticut full of Maine people and their Maine money,” Hanson continued, referring to daily bus trips to Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun, two of the world’s largest casinos. “We have to ask the question if we wouldn’t be better off keeping some of that money here.”

Changing debate

Although Hanson said he doesn’t know the answer to that question, those at CasinosNo! say the price is too high.

Not only would a casino damage the state’s reputation as an outdoor destination, critics say, but it would grant the tribes a monopoly on gambling that would put local restaurants and hotels at an unfair disadvantage.

“If you vote for a casino, every store in this downtown will close!” a CasinosNo! demonstrator yelled to honking motorists at a busy intersection last weekend in front of the group’s Sanford headquarters.

With the moral argument against the casino weakened by the state’s involvement in the lottery and other forms of gambling, opponents have gradually – and polls suggest successfully – focused on what they say are “deceptions” in the statute behind the referendum, which would amend the 1980 Maine Indian Claims Settlement Act.

If voters approve Question 3, the state will essentially enter into a 20-year agreement with the tribes to operate the casino. Like the settlement itself, the 20-plus page amendment, titled the Maine Tribal Gaming Act, could only be changed if both the state and the tribes agree.

That alone has critics up in arms, warning voters that there would be no turning back should the state find the casino a bad deal.

After dissecting the statute, CasinosNo! attorneys asserted that local law enforcement would have no jurisdiction in the casino and, furthermore, the tribes would only have to follow those state laws cited in the statute.

Maine Attorney General G. Steven Rowe differed with casino critics, issuing his opinion Thursday that while the statute “raises a number of serious and significant legal issues,” it was unlikely to prevent the state from enforcing its laws at the casino because it could not be placed on tribal land.

The opinion came in response to a request for information by Maine Public Safety Commissioner Michael Cantara, whose department would have regulatory authority over the casino.

While lawyers and media consultants have waged much of the day-to-day public battle over a casino, two voices – those of the tribal leaders – have surfaced only occasionally to outline the potential benefits to the tribes, which lag behind state averages in nearly every economic and educational measure.

“This can open up so many doors for us,” said Penobscot Nation Chief Barry Dana, whose tribe near Old Town stands to split between $50 million and $100 million in annual revenue with the Passamaquoddy Tribe of Washington County.

Dana said the tribes plan to use the money to fund improvements to their health care, educational and housing programs.

“Whether people vote yes or no,” he continued, “I think the last thought in their heads [before they vote] should be what they can do to improve Maine.”

Question 3

(Citizen Initiative)

Do you want to allow a casino to be run by the Passamaquoddy Tribe and Penobscot Nation if part of the revenue is used for state education and municipal revenue sharing?