PROVIDENCE -- With a legislative gambling-study committee only two weeks away from issuing its report, the opposing players in the Rhode Island casino debate are scrambling to get in a last word, win converts and shore up support.
The owners of Rhode Island's existing video-slot arenas -- Newport Grand Jai Alai and Lincoln Park -- delivered a report to the commission that denounced as "an absurdity" the argument, by Harrah's Entertainment, that the two facilities could prosper and thrive "while competing with a $500-million casino in the heart of the state."
The report was entitled: "Too many unanswered questions. Too much risk."
But pitchmen for Harrah's Entertainment -- the Las Vegas-based company seeking to build and run Rhode Island's first full-fledged casino, in West Warwick, on behalf of the state's Narragansett Indians -- have also been busy.
On Thursday, Harrah's vice president, Jan Jones, and two of her company's Rhode Island lawyer-lobbyists took three state senators out to what was later described as a $50 lunch at the Capital Grille: Senate majority whip Dominick J. Ruggerio, D-Providence, and the chairmen of the Senate gaming and finance committees, Maryellen Goodwin, D-Providence, and Stephen D. Alves, D-West Warwick.
Asked who paid, Jones said: "The attorneys bought."
Between Monday, when their plane alit in Boston, and Thursday, when they flew out, Jones and Harrah's lawyer David Satz also met with Chamber of Commerce officials from Warwick to Newport, lunched with unnamed "labor leaders" and delivered a copy of their newest power point presentation to the special House gambling-study commission.
"The purpose is to educate them the same way we educated you," Harrah's lawyer David Satz told a newspaper reporter.
The bottom line?
Under its own "best-case scenario" -- which would be no new gambling in Massachusetts -- Harrah's does not expect Rhode Island to net much more in "gaming taxes" from the Lincoln dogtrack, the Newport fronton and a new West Warwick casino in 2006 than state lottery officials expect from the dogtrack and fronton alone.
With the recent approval of 1,825 additional machines, Lottery officials expect the state share of the play on the 4,303 new and old video-lottery terminals in Lincoln and Newport to leap from an anticipated $171.2 million this year to $347.8 million during the year that begins July 1, 2006.
Harrah's own projection of what the state might net in 2006 if a West Warwick casino was added to the mix and taxed at 25 percent of its gross-gaming revenue is not much higher: $353 million.
And that relies on $214 million from the Lincoln dogtrack at the current tax rate, which is more than double what Harrah's is proposing to pay; $100 million from the new casino; and $39 million from the fronton.
But the Harrah's representatives hope to convince decision-makers that a West Warwick casino is the only way they can prevent events outside their control -- such as the introduction of casino gambling and video slots in Massachusetts -- from decimating the gambling revenue Rhode Island is currently getting -- the state's third-largest source of income.
One scenario sketched by Harrah's in its latest report to the House gambling-study commission shows the state's video-slot revenue dropping like a lead balloon in the face of "slots at tracks as well as commercial casino gaming" in Massachusetts.
(Late last month, the Boston Herald reported that Harrah's itself was one of the potential players on the Bay State gambling scene, having "had partnership talks with Suffolk Downs in East Boston." When asked about this, Jones said Harrah's was simply "monitoring" developments in Massachusetts.)
With no casino in Rhode Island to balance the odds, the Harrah's report shows video-slot activity at the two existing venues plummeting from a potential $428 million next year down to $303 million a year later, and the state's share of that revenue dropping by an equally precipitous $64 million.
"The bottom line here is that a destination casino resort, if planned properly, can secure for the state a portion of the gaming-tax revenues that is currently exported to Connecticut and may be further threatened by Massachusetts if it decides to legalize additional gambling," Harrah's argues.
But Newport Jai Alai general manager Diane S. Hurley and Lincoln Park CEO Dan Bucci call it "incredible" and "absurd" for Harrah's to suggest -- as it has -- that the fronton and the dogtrack would make substantially more money if they shared the stage with a Rhode Island casino, than they would if their only new competition was across the border in Massachusetts.
The Harrah's report shows dogtrack income from video slots leaping from $317 million to $389 million between now and 2006, despite the opening of a new West Warwick casino, while dropping from that same $317 million to $263 million, over the same period of time, in the face of new competition from Massachusetts alone.
Of the fronton's prospects, the Harrah's report says: More gambling opportunities in Massachusetts would cut Jai Alai's potential video-slot action from a high of $75 million down to $47 million by 2006, while a new Rhode Island casino would nick it only slightly.
"We don't see how their assumption could hold," said Hurley in a recent interview.
"A Rhode Island casino would mildly affect us," but "with a casino in another state, farther away . . . we would be devastated? This is where we find their assumptions incredible," she said.
The job of sorting through the contradictions now falls to the Special House Committee to Study Gaming, chaired by state Rep. Paul Sherlock, the Warwick Democrat who also chairs the House Finance Committee.
In an interview last week, Sherlock said the committee would meet its April 1 deadline for issuing a report on everything it has heard about gambling since it began holding hearings in July.
Sherlock said the report will not take a position on casino gambling, "good or bad. That was never our intent." He said the study committee will simply "relay what we heard" and "provide enough data for everybody to make an informed decision, including the legislature."
Whatever the report says, once it is out, the debate that began more than a decade ago will begin anew on whether to allow a statewide referendum on the proposed West Warwick casino in November 2004.
"I was there to listen," said Goodwin, the Providence Democrat who chairs the new Senate Committee on Constitutional and Gaming Issues, of her cheeseburger-and-Diet-Coke lunch with the Harrah's public-relations team.
Alves and Ruggerio -- the other senators who were there that day -- have both sponsored casino legislation in the past. Goodwin doubles as a member of the state Lottery Commission, which now draws the vast majority of its income from the video-slot activity in Newport and Lincoln.
"If you listen to the folks from Harrah's, they assured us there would be no impact on Lincoln and Jai Alai. Perhaps, a year or two out. But, not in the future," Goodwin said.
"In the the best of all scenarios, a casino could be built in West Warwick, and Lincoln and Jai Alai could continue to exist and make money for the state," she said.
Was she convinced? "I don't know," she said. "My job is to protect the lottery . . . [and] there are a lot of variables. I'd really have to see some backup."
