No on Question 3

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?

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Most of the problems with Question 3 can be traced to state government’s unwillingness to address generally issues of self-determination for the tribes and, specifically, how a casino fits within those issues. And while those problems are considerably smaller than opponents’ breathless warnings of doom, they are real and should discourage voters, who have been left with the duty of resolving this complicated question.

The casino proposal is inadequate for two reasons: It does not give Maine enough of a cut of the profits and it cannot adequately answer oversight and regulatory concerns raised by the Attorney General’s Office, among others. Combined they should produce a “no” vote at the polls.

Maine should get a share of the casino profits because this initiative would allow the Penobscot Nation and Passamaquoddy tribe to operate a monopoly, thereby ensuring higher profits for themselves while keeping out others from entering the casino business and paying tax revenue to the state. The people deciding whether Maine should enter into this agreement – the voters – have an obligation to ensure the state’s share is fair. Almost no one voting has expertise in this area.

Sebastian Sinclair of New Gloucester does, however. Mr. Sinclair is the president of Christiansen Capital Advisors, which performs studies of the economics, management, operations, taxation and regulation of gambling. He recently looked at what Maine government would get – 25 percent of the slot-machine revenue, estimated at $100 million a year – and concluded in a recent op-ed column that, “This proposal is bad for Maine.”

Mr. Sinclair’s persuasive reasoning is that the casino being considered for southern Maine is not a traditional Indian casino because the Claims Settlement Act did not allow for Maine tribes’ participation in those. Instead, the casino would operate at the suffrage of the state. “When supply is limited or monopoly status is given,” he wrote, “gambling privilege tax rates rise dramatically. In Austria and Germany, for example, where monopolies are awarded, gambling privilege taxes are approximately 80 percent. Maine, which would become the only state-licensed casino monopoly in the United States, will rank in the bottom 39 percent in terms of the state share. Our neighbor Rhode Island, which has two slots-only facilities, pays 53.1 percent to the state projected to equal $230 million in 2004.”

The proposed regulation of the casino is nearly as disappointing. In a lengthy memo this fall, Attorney General Steven Rowe laid out a dozen substantial concerns that all more or less fall under the following conditions:

. Many of the provisions in the legislation are vague;

. When in doubt, bill provisions, according to the legislation, “must be liberally construed in favor of gaming by and on behalf of the Tribes”;

. The legislation can’t be changed, without the consent of the tribes, for 20 years.

The attorney general raised questions about municipal jurisdiction and local law enforcement, the state’s inability to close the casino, whether state laws not specifically mentioned apply to the casino, the effect of adopting the Connecticut Compact wholesale and its hundreds of pages of appendices, which the bill does, and the ambiguous tax status of the tribes and gaming operators. If all goes well with the casino, this combination of disadvantages for Maine might not be an issue, but who can predict what will happen over the next 20 years to a risky business yet to be established here?

The trade-off for hoping these questions don’t turn into serious problems are more jobs in southern Maine and the inadequate slot-machine payments to the state. It isn’t a monstrous deal, but it isn’t good enough, either.