Joshua N. Fenton, the owner of a public-relations firm, says that much of what he feared about gambling he no longer fears.

01:00 AM EST on Friday, March 3, 2006

BY KATHERINE GREGG
Journal State House Bureau

PROVIDENCE -- In 1993, when he was a young thirtysomething, Providence Councilman Joshua N. Fenton led a highly publicized campaign to keep casino gambling out of the capital city.

He declared his "unequivocal opposition" to the prospect in a letter cosigned by a list of prominent civic, business and religious leaders.

He denounced the potential damage to "our city's poorest and most vulnerable citizens." He warned against "giving our economy over to crime bosses and broken dreams."

As one of the leaders of Providence Residents Against Casino Gambling, he and a fellow council member also issued a scathing 28-page report on what they saw then as the evils of casino gambling. Among their findings:

"Gambling is a dangerous addiction."

"The jobs that will be offered . . . will most likely consist of unskilled low-paying jobs such as bartenders, chambermaids, valets, waiters etc."

"Casinos tend not to spur local economic development, but rather drive out everything in their path."

"It is an accepted fact that casino gambling invites organized crime."

To reinforce this last point, Fenton and Providence Councilwoman Balbina Young quoted this observation by a former member of the President's Coalition on Organized Crime:

"There is so much big and fast money . . . and so many opportunities for making 'deals' which pay off big, that many public officials in casino cities weaken under the pressure and do things they ordinarily would not do."

But that was February 1993. This is now.

Josh Fenton has a new role in the casino debate.

He is the 43-year-old owner of the small Providence public-relations firm under a $12,500-a-month contract to promote the proposed West Warwick casino for Las Vegas casino giant, Harrah's Entertainment, and the Narragansett Indian tribe.

Harrah's senior vice president Jan Jones said Harrah's was aware when it recently hired Fenton that he once held "inappropriate beliefs which have certainly been rectified" by "the economic exuberance of Connecticut" and a series of impact studies that "showed him the error of his young ways."

"He was young and naive," said Jones, hailing Fenton's turnaround as a model of how, she believes, views toward casinos have changed. "We lived in a different world in 1993," she said.

Fenton's words, almost exactly.

In 1993, Foxwoods had just made the move from high-stakes bingo parlor to casino. Rhode Islanders had just gotten their first taste of video poker. The state was still crawling out of a crippling banking crisis and gambling was not yet the state's third-largest revenue producer.

"A casino," said Fenton, "really would have dominated the economic landscape."

Events since have produced what he describes as "a transformation on a number of fronts," including his personal views.

For part of the time, he worked, at the Leonard/Monahan and RDW advertising agencies where, he said, he worked on projects and promotions for both the state Lottery and GTECH, "a major employer that I thought was a good, responsible employer" and "important component of Rhode Island."

Much of what he feared about gambling, he no longer fears.

In 1993, worried about compulsive gambling, he issued a report that said, "Casinos have an aura. They create a fantasy which gives one the illusion that one has money to spend, that maybe next time 'I will win.' It is a vicious circle."

Now, he sees "compulsive behavior" as a fact of life and says: "Are there ever people who become compulsive gamblers? Are there ever reporters who become compulsive fiction writers? Yes. Those always take place."

His concerns have been assuaged, he said, by Harrah's "pioneering" efforts to encourage "responsible gaming." From Harrah's Web site, he quickly produced a recitation of some of those efforts.

They include: help-line phone numbers on player cards; training so "employees always know where to refer customers requesting assistance" and a "looking-out-for-kids" program that "urge[s] parents not to leave their children" unattended.

Of his earlier fears for the poor, Fenton said: "I think that casino gaming as well as lotteries statistically, especially lotteries, have always attracted a higher percentage of low-income folks."

But, this leads him to another rhetorical question: "Are there ever, in any industry, those who take advantage of others? Yeah. I mean, in the mortgage industry, there are mortgage companies that are creating financing structures that take advantage of the poor."

Casinos, specifically?

"I think there have been a number of changes in the gaming industry . . . corporate steps they have taken to minimize impacts . . . similar to how restaurants and bars have taken lots of steps to ensure that folks don't drink and drive."

Asked for a casino industry example, he said: "How they market. I think they are much more interested in marketing to conventioneers. They are much more interested in marketing to more upscale visitors because it has proven that it makes more sense."

Corruption?

"I think in [heavily] regulated states there has been less corruption than in less-regulated states . . . [and] in the case of a Narragansett Indian casino, the proposal has always advocated a strong regulatory structure, one that Rhode Island does not have now."

And what of his earlier concerns about traffic congestion; real-estate speculation driving up housing prices; a casino sucking the life out of other businesses?

Housing prices?

"I think the real-estate market is pretty saturated in Rhode Island . . . so I am not sure that is relevant anymore."

Traffic?

Unlike the earlier Providence proposal, the West Warwick casino "would actually minimize any traffic because it's an on-ramp and an off-ramp" and since "people wouldn't be going all the way through the state, all the way down to Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun . . . it might lessen traffic in South County."

Surrounding businesses?

He surmised that public opinion has been swayed -- along with his own -- by "how the tourism industry has developed" in and around Connecticut's Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun casinos.

"If you remember, back in 1993, if Electric Boat made an announcement about layoffs, Westerly and New London shuddered. Housing prices dropped, businesses went out of business. That's not true anymore. That region of New England is not solely dependent on the defense industry any more.

"Are there always repercussions, development, increases in housing prices when you have a facility of any kind of that magnitude? Sure," but "no different than building a football stadium," he said.

So, is it fair to say he now disavows everything he said about casinos in '93?

"No. I don't know where you come to that conclusion," he said. "You are making a leap that the proposed Narragansett Indian casino is analogous to an undefined facility that was going to be located in Providence, R.I."

"I think the state of what Providence was then and what Rhode Island is now is dramaticaly different," he said.

"To be successful as a state which does not overly burden its workers and its businesses, it has to be competitive in the gaming and entertaiment industry. It has to compete with Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun."

Fenton said he would not take a client that offended him.

He said he would not, for example, "defend a gun manufacturer." And, "I don't think, probably, because of my environmental legacy, I would take the lead-paint industry," said Fenton, who was an aide to the late U.S. Sen. John H. Chafee, and later an assistant to the director of the state Department of Environmental Management between 1989-96.

The Narragansetts' chief sachem, Matthew Thomas, said he has no qualms about Fenton's past role as an anticasino crusader because that was more than 10 years ago. "In that 10 years, a lot has happened that has caused people to change their minds who aren't getting paid."

kgregg@projo.com / (401) 277-7078