PROVIDENCE -- It's time to get moving on a casino proposal for Rhode Island, or risk being beaten to additional gambling booty by Massachusetts, state Rep. Timothy A. Williamson, D-West Warwick, told a legislative commission studying gambling issues.
"Please, in a few years I don't want to be known as an I-told-you-so," Williamson said to the Special House Commission to Study Gaming last evening.
The commission has been meeting regularly since the summer, taking testimony on a variety of gambling issues. It expects to complete its work by spring. The undercurrent to the study is a proposal by the Narragansett Indian tribe to build a casino in Williamson's town of West Warwick.
Williamson told the commission that he sees an imbalance in the type of witnesses that have testified during the study -- most have testified on the social problems of a casino, he said.
"Right now the public face of this commission has been problem gambling," Williamson said. "We all understand that the issue of problem gambling is a serious one. But it is only one of several issues this commission is charged with reviewing and investigating."
Williamson said he wants to hear more about the economic benefits of a casino, and the types of taxes and state regulation under which a casino may operate in Rhode Island.
"In Rhode Island, you can bet on dog racing, horse racing, jai alai, Keno, Powerball, Lotto, play a [video-slot machine] and scratch literally any instant lottery game imaginable," Williamson said. "Yet the critics and naysayers somehow tell us that a casino, that creates thousands of new jobs, enhances tourism and provides hundreds of millions of dollars in new tax revenues, is bad for Rhode Island."
Massachusetts, he said, appears poised to add video-poker machines or coin-drop slots at five racetracks, two of which -- Plainville and Raynham -- are within 30 miles of Rhode Island, he said.
"This is going to mean strong competition for Lincoln and Jai Alai," he said, referring to Rhode Island's two heavily-taxed gambling parlors. Massachusetts leaders have also flirted with full-fledged casino proposals, and another Connecticut tribe may be interested in a new casino right over the Westerly border, adding to the casino options provided by Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun, he said.
"We need to have the vision to move forward in a timely fashion," he said. "If we don't, I fear we will still be studying this issue when they are breaking ground for a new casino in either Massachusetts or Connecticut."
Rep. Paul Sherlock, D-Warwick, the commission's co-chair, said the commission did not solicit testimony from anti-gambling groups. Those groups "requested to come," he said.
Sherlock said the commission is mindful of its responsibility to study the economic benefits of a casino, and that projections are being developed. The commission is trying to conduct much of its work in-house, Sherlock has said. Gary Ciminero, acting executive director of the House Policy Office, has been advising the commission. The commission may also bring an outside consultant into the project, Sherlock said.
After hearing Williamson's comments last night, the commission heard the opposite view:
"The social impacts [of] problem gambling is the side of the equation that receives the least attention yet has the potential to cause significant problems with both economic and social costs," said Theodore Nikolla, the director of the Citizens' Task Force on Addictions in New London County. He is also chair of the Gambling Impact Committee of Southeastern Connecticut.
"It's my feeling that more gambling equals more problems," said Nikolla.
He has hopes for some "common ground" on which the state can get the financial benefits of additional gambling, while committing the money necessary to address the associated problems, he said.
