New consensus in Maine starts with no casinos

They held a casino “job opportunity” fair in my hometown of Sanford recently. Reportedly, more than 400 people trooped through an old brick mill building, sat down with jobs counselors and went home with glossy brochures.

It was said to be quite a success. Unless you went with the idea of actually getting a job.

The soonest anyone will be hired to work at a casino under the best of circumstances is two years from now. If a car dealer advertised vehicles he could not deliver for two years, he’d be risking a consumer fraud complaint.

I know the event was just a campaign stunt. Still, if casino promoters can pull off a jobless job fair, isn’t that fair warning that they’re more interested in duping us than employing us?

Let’s face it, the casino is no more about jobs than it is about a tax bonanza, a partnership with the host town, economic development, or any of the other come-ons we are being induced to believe. They’re all window dressings for an enterprise too ugly to bring out in the open.

People forget casinos are no ordinary business. Spreading misery is a necessary element of their success. The very customers who cause all the problems are the ones who create the tremendous profits. Problem gamblers are not collateral victims. They are central to the business plan. This is not an industry that can be reformed.

Nor is Tom Tureen, the developers’ chief lobbyist, someone who deserves a second chance. As Jeff Benedict documents in his book, “Without Reservation,” Tureen delivered Foxwoods unto Connecticut through what might charitably be called clever lawyering. When Tureen says the proposed Maine casino is a chance to “get it right,” I shudder to think what new tricks he has up his sleeve.

A casino would hurt Maine in many ways. The damage, of course, would be greatest in the proposed host community, Sanford, which would have to live with the added traffic, housing shortages, drunken driving and gambling-debt-induced crime. No business in its right mind relocates to a casino town, unless they are a casino or in the business of loan sharking, pawn brokering or prostitution. So, the jobs we get from a casino may well be the last jobs we ever get.

A casino also threatens our identity as a state. How will a large transient work force not hurt our small-town spirit and sense of community? How will a flood of campaign donations from an industry known for its financial clout in political circles not harm our relatively clean political culture that allows people of integrity to rise to the top? How will the availability of an enormous number of jobs that require not even a high-school education not undermine the efforts of parents and educators to raise the traditionally low aspirations of Maine kids? How will Las Vegas-style advertising not dent Maine’s attempt to market itself as a wholesome outdoorsy place? We can do better than a casino.

Yes, Maine has lost fishing jobs, papermaking jobs, shoe-shop jobs and manufacturing jobs. The state has tried the cheap labor strategy, but now those jobs are done by even cheaper labor elsewhere. Maine has also tried business tax breaks, but that strategy too has exhausted itself.

Maine’s quality of life is all we really have left to offer the world. That’s fine. The world is changing and quality of life matters more and more. Our quality of life is our great jobs producer. I’m referring not just to the obvious marketers of Maine mystique – the L.L. Beans, Poland Springs and Old Town Canoes. Our entire tourism industry owes its existence to Maine’s quality of life. Ever wonder why “Made in Maine,” not “Made in New Jersey,” sells? Ever wonder why Maine has become a retirement mecca? The Maine mystique sells.

But not with a casino in our midst. If you doubt a single casino can really harm the overall quality of life, go to downtown Biddeford and ask a merchant there what the Maine Energy Recovery Co. plant has done for their quality of life. If they could, they’d trade away those MERC jobs in a minute. Even Las Vegas has learned it must protect its own mystique. After a decade of hotel rebuilding and re-marketing itself as a family vacation destination, Las Vegas discovered profits were down and went back to its sin-city roots. Gambling profits and families don’t mix? Thanks for the lesson.

As casinos proliferate elsewhere, a casino-free environment will become another point of pride, an economic advantage that increases with time. That’s why we in southern Maine have put out homemade signs opposing the casino, held prayer vigils, staffed tables at fairs, distributed literature at football games and hosted forums. Opposing the casino has been a community building exercise that feels like it will lead to bigger and better things for Maine.

Some day in the future, we’ll look back on the day we said “no” to casinos and realize it was the beginning of a new consensus in Maine – a consensus that investments in our quality is the key to our future. Let other states host the conferences on the latest treatment modalities for gambling addiction. Let other states race each other to the bottom as growing competition for the casino dollar forces everyone into awarding ever steeper tax breaks to casinos. We’ll be happily hosting job fairs with real jobs.

Lee Burnett is a Springvale resident and a volunteer on the CasinosNo! campaign.