Those busy boffins at the American Gaming Association have been crunching data from Detroit and come up with some interesting statistics. The three Motown casinos are a bit lighter in the workforce (down 4%), having lost or laid off 350 employees out of nearly 8,000. The remainder — between tips, benefits and salary — took home $401 million last year. Not surprisingly, gaming was one of the 10 largest employers in the market, as the casinos continued to be durable earners — the fourth-best gambling market in the country. Of course, some casinos are more durable than others: MGM Grand Detroit made a $156 million profit while Greektown Casino lost $31 million.
Collectively, the casinos employed more Detroiters than did Comerica Bank or Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, among others. From the standpoint of City Hall, the news wasn’t entirely good. Gaming taxes — the lifeblood of the city — fell to $109 million from $115 million. That’s hard cheese when you’re going through a bankruptcy.
* To its credit, Penn National Gaming — probably the most doggedly 
persistent company in gambling — continues to build its Massachusetts slot parlor, even with a vote to potentially outlaw casinos looming in November. The question begged by this scenario is, who pays the piper if Penn’s Plainville slots parlor-to-be turns to useless concrete on Election Day? (A fiendishly worded ballot question threatens to confound voters.) Penn could just eat the cost but Plainville Town Administrator Joseph Fernandes fears that taxpayers will be on the hook for a refund.
“It will not be from the folks collecting signatures, but from people like you and I,” Fernandes told the Milford Daily News. Plainville Board of Selectmen Chairman Robert Rose is more sanguine, concluding, “We’ll worry about that if the repeal does happen.” The project enjoyed 76% support from Plainville voters, so it would be a cruel blow were it voted away.
* Tropicana Entertainment experienced a graveyard-shift glitch of systemic proportions at Lumiere Place. This is the downside of having all your slot machines networked, especially when (in this case) they stop paying out. Lumiere had to revert to manual payouts while slot technicians tried to fix the problem, to no avail. The Missouri Gaming Commission finally ordered the entire casino floor closed, shortly before midnight, allowing to reopen the following dawn. The problem does not appear to have been solved yet, but the MGC relented on its shutdown order seven hours after issuing.
