Casino showdown (continued)

RHODE ISLAND, of course, is already in the gambling business. Revenue from lottery tickets and the video slots at Lincoln and Newport has increased with expansion over the last decade, becoming one of the largest sources of state revenue. Asked whether the governor is being hypocritical by opposing the casino, Carcieri spokesman Jeff Neal says, "The governor has made it clear that the state already is reliant on a significant amount of gambling revenue. The question is, is it a good idea to make the state even more beholden to gambling?"

Carcieri "has concerns regarding the impact of a casino on the state budget," Neal says. "He is concerned about the possibility that a casino might increase the potential for public corruption. He is very worried about what impact a casino would have on businesses throughout the state, including hotels, restaurants, and performing arts venues. He’s concerned about the social costs of expanded gambling."

The interests with something to gain or lose with a casino — Harrah’s and the Narragansetts, on one side, and Lincoln Park and Newport Grand, on the other — have fueled the $1 million-plus advertising campaign that has played out across the state in recent weeks on talk radio and bus billboards.

But during a June 10 news conference at the Greater Providence Chamber of Commerce, an array of speakers representing the business, religious, arts, and preservation communities echoed the concerns cited by Carcieri. The opponents, organized as part of the Kay Coalition Against Casino Gambling, say a casino would have a variety of negative effects, from fostering illusory dreams of hitting it big for low- and moderate-income residents to harming other elements of the local economy. "In our opinion, the establishment of a casino gambling facility in Rhode Island is ill-advised," said chamber president James Hagan. "Unlike manufacturers, technology companies, and financial service firms, casinos don’t bring money in. They vacuum it up at the expense of local residents and at the expense of local businesses."

Other speakers, including the Reverend John E. Holt, executive minister of the Rhode Island State Council of Churches; Catherine Horsey, the outgoing executive director of the Providence Preservation Society; downtown developer Arnold "Buff" Chace, the chairman of Providence Repertory Company; and J.L. "Lynn" Singleton, president of the Providence Performing Arts Center, describe a dire picture of a casino’s effect. The speakers say a casino will hurt efforts to revitalize town centers, and undercut entities like the PPAC — the second largest attraction in Providence — and the Rhode Island Convention Center. After the investment of hundreds of million of dollars in the capital city over the last decade, the concept of drawing visitors away to an attraction a few exits down Interstate 95 leads Chace to say, "I guess my question to the legislature [is], are you nuts for even considering this?"

And while casino supporters cite a referendum as a matter of democracy in action, Robin Porter, a former state senator who helps to lead the Kay Coalition, says the amendment added to the state Constitution in 1994 — requiring a referendum for an expansion of gambling — "was not meant as a tool to expand. It was meant as a tool to prevent expansion." Rather than passing the ball to voters, he says, "We’re saying we elected you [legislators] to make those decisions."

Gaming has become a huge business in the US, with some 325 casinos in more than 28 states generating more than $10 billion in annual revenue. Launching a casino has been relatively easy for most federally recognized tribes, helping to reverse the legacy of poverty and persecution that came with the colonialists’ conquest of American Indians. Rhode Island politicians, though, have regularly opposed efforts by the Narragansetts, the historic rivals of the Mashantucket Pequots, to get a piece of the action.

Most notably, after court fights and other forms of wrangling, the tribe was exempted from the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act when the late US Senator John Chafee inserted a controversial rider into a 1996 law, meaning that the Narragansetts’ proposal must be approved in a statewide referendum. Being exempted from IGRA led the tribe to locate the proposed casino somewhere other than the tribal land in Charlestown. But in 1998 — one year before the tribe found a very willing host community in economically depressed West Warwick — the General Assembly passed a law that gave itself the right to determine if a casino question should be placed on the ballot. Prior to this year, efforts to bring about a referendum have come up empty.

Critics, meanwhile, seem far less concerned with the tribe’s desire for economic development than fighting the casino.

To some, there are no real answers when it comes to reconciling the Narragansetts’ desire for self-improvement with the regressive nature of gambling.

"The whole notion of extracting state revenue in this way is something that I find very troubling, and yet, there is the realpolitik of Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun just across the border," says H. Philip West Jr., the executive director of Common Cause of Rhode Island, whose organization does not have an official stance on the casino issue. "And yet I get angry when I see this [gambling] is now appearing only to be entertainment when it is clearly destroying people. Does that give me a policy answer? It doesn’t."

THE NARRAGANSETTS gained a fair measure of sympathy last summer when a state police raid ordered by Caricieri, after the tribe defied the state by opening a tax-free smoke shop in Charlestown, resulted in an ugly fracas. Many Rhode Islanders were left with the sense that the Indians had been victimized once again.

Should the General Assembly place a referendum on the ballot, the advertising on behalf of the tribe will almost certainly highlight similar slights and the obstacles steadily placed in the path of the Narragansetts’ drive for a casino.

Opponents would likely cite what they describe as the destabilizing effects of a casino. The new Brown University poll also found that 45 percent of respondents said they would worry if an out-of-state corporation in the gambling industry financed the construction of the casino, while 44 percent said no, and 11 percent were undecided. Mindful of this, it’s not hard to imagine critics maintaining their mantra that an envisioned casino would mostly be for the benefit of Harrah’s Entertainment.

Should the legislature not place a referendum on the ballot, Dufault says the Narragansetts will try to undo their exemption from the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act. If the General Assembly does move forward with the referendum, Carcieri has pledged to veto it, and despite the small number of Republicans on Smith Hill, some observers think the governor might sustain it.

In the interim, with the state’s voters closely divided, the question of whether a referendum will pass is anyone’s bet.

Ian Donnis can be reached at idonnis[a]phx.com.