Gambling petition won't keep money in Nebraska

 

Nothing is more amazing than the economic claims of gambling proponents. Now they want to expand gambling in order to "Keep the Money in Nebraska."

Uh. Right.

"Hey Nebraska, your economic bucket is dripping," say the slot and casino men. "We can fix it for you. We'll just drill a bunch of holes around the leak and catch what comes out. Of course, for our trouble we'll be keeping one-third of what we catch."

The Nevada casinos, slot distributors, horse tracks and bars have all gotten together to push a petition for: a pair of big casinos in Omaha, a dozen or more slot machine warehouse casinos at the horse tracks and spread across the state, and slots in every bar.

Eleven of the petition sponsors are from Las Vegas. Do you think they really care to "Keep the Money in Nebraska?" Do sponsors from Nebraska's horse tracks care that of Iowa's mid-size cities, those with slots have the lowest growth rates in retail sales? Do the bar owner sponsors care that slots across South Dakota shrink that state's economy by over $100 million each year?

The rest of us care.

To get all the gambling interests on one side required a petition which offers something Nebraskans don't want and will soundly reject: Slots in every back yard.

Far from keeping dollars in Nebraska, the "Take More Money out of Nebraska" proposal can actually be expected to triple the overall amounts gambled by Nebraskans each year, one-third of which, according to industry norms, will -- that's right -- leave the state.

In dollar terms, the "Take More Money out of Nebraska" gambling proposal can be expected to drain $200 million more from Nebraska's economy than the $98 million that is leaving now. And, remarkably, the 2001 Omaha Chamber of Commerce study by Creighton economist Ernie Goss suggests that rather than slowing the flow of Nebraska gambling dollars to Council Bluffs, that flow might slightly increase, likely because "new market growth" (not included in studies Coast Casino provided to the Legislature) will create at least 15,000 new Nebraska gambling addicts (who provide about one-third of gambling's profits).

Separate from the drain on Nebraska's economy are the social costs due to gambling addiction, currently estimated by the Nebraska Health and Human Services System to be over $200 million. The slot owners won't pick up the tab when crime, lost work productivity, bankruptcy and other addiction-related costs triple across the state.

Some say that the "Take More Money out of Nebraska" campaign isn't serious, that it is just a new charade by outside gambling interests to spook the Nebraska Legislature into removing Nebraska's constitutional barrier against hardcore gambling.

It is hard to believe that a Las Vegas-sponsored initiative pushed by paid out-of-state petition carriers will make much headway in Nebraska -- especially when it threatens to put over 15 casinos across the state and slots in every bar. To add to the confusion, the proposal requires that three separate petitions get enough signatures and then get voted in.

That's highly unlikely. Across the country gambling has made little headway, even in the recent bad economic times when it was expected to thrive. Last year, for good reason, 42 of 45 gambling expansion proposals failed around the country. The latest Nebraska proposal, launched on the false promise of keeping money in Nebraska, should join them.

If thousands of out-of-state slot machine mosquitos are sucking blood from the arm of the state, it is no solution to invite thousands more to drink from our neck.

 

Jonathan Krutz lives in Eagle, Nebr .and  has been research director of Nebraska's anti-gambling voice, “Gambling with the Good Life”, since 1995.

 

Back to Editorials/Articles