Look what they found. Legislators in Delaware have “found” money to aid the state’s ailing racinos and, surprisingly, no sofa cushions were involved. $10 million will be used to help reduce the racinos’ costs to slot machine vendors by 75%. Explained reporter Jon Offredo, “The money to bail out the casinos would comprise of $5 million leftover from last year’s bail out of the casino, $3.2 million associated with the Kent County Sports Complex, and the remainder, like the sports complex money, would come from undesignated funds in the Delaware Economic Development Office‘s job infrastructure fund.”
That Kent County money is being borrowed and, as state Sen. Brian Bushweller (D, right) notes, will have to be repaid next year. “I’m looking at it more like a door-opener. The bill passes and it creates a door-opener for next year,” he says of his bill. Bushweller also supports a tax decrease but it doesn’t look like that’s going to be on the table. The current bill is a patch on a leaky ship and nobody is making any bones that it’s anything else.
Bad idea. Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) has put his John Hancock on a bill that would require casino owners to collect defunct child-support payments from winners. Never mind that the necessary database for such a police action doesn’t exist: Casinos are now expected to act as an ancillary enforcement agency in what can only be called an unfunded (and dubious) mandate. This idea comes up somewhere every few years but most lawmakers realize its stupidity instead of enacting it into law.
Cheap Irony Dept. To construct its National Harbor megaresort, MGM Resorts International has chosen the same general contractor who is overseeing Horseshoe Baltimore, National Harbor’s nearest rival. National Harbor’s budget continues to creep upward, now pegged at $1 billion.
Redrawing history. If the federal government has listened to C. Etzel Pearcy, the gambling capital of America would be in the state of San Gabriel. See what I mean?
