It’s not even been 18 months since Maryland voters gave their assent to slot houses — a time in which the state has to erect a regulatory apparatus, vet applicants, and then wait for the latter to get up and running. That’s not good enough for some Annapolis lawmakers who are flying into a full-blown panic. The anticipated tax dollars aren’t flowing in as soon as (unrealistically) expect, so the illogical response by the Legislature is to call for more forms of gambling, stat. Geez, you guys, your state’s never done this before. Give the process a little time to work. You’re still on pace to blow past Kansas — and even though New York authorized a major gambling expansion in 2001, the Empire State has implemented it at a crawl.
It’s unclear whether the pitch to add table games to the racino/slot parlor mix is an attempt to keep up with the Joneses (i.e., Pennsylvania) or a concession to good-faith applicants like Penn National Gaming and Cordish Gaming. (Probably the former, with any benefit to the latter being strictly lagniappe.) Such companies, after all, would see their Maryland casinos potentially kneecapped by the sudden expansion of slot machines to veterans’ clubs and even the Baltimore airport. An expansion supporter, state Sen. Dolores Kelley has the right idea when she suggests putting this to a public vote. Maryland’s public approved a specific form of gambling expansion and the Legislature, in its impatience, threatens to go well beyond its constituents’ remit.
Do you work at isolated Foxwoods Resort Casino but can’t afford a car? Tough luck, says Foxwoods management. Shuttle service to Groton, Stonington and North Stonington, having gone from frequent to periodic, will now go to nonexistent on weekdays. The upside of the economic downturn is that there are now evidently enough vacant spots in the Great Cedar and MGM Grand garages to accommodate employees’ automobiles. The bad news is, even if you have a car, if you work at Foxwoods 1.0 and have to park at the MGM facility on the weekends, you’ve still got a mile’s walk ahead of you. That’s one way to stay in shape but if making it harder for employees to get to work is Foxwoods’ management’s notion of “remain[ing] competitive,” I submit that Foxwoods ought to put its thinking cap back on and come up with a better idea.
Congratulations to the Las Vegas Sun for winning a second-place National Headliner Award for “Journalistic Innovation.” It did so with a multi-part, multimedia package on gambling addiction right here in Las Vegas. It’s not a comfortable subject and definitely not one upon which either local politicians or media care to dwell, so big ups to the Sun for having trained so many resources upon an unpopular topic. Thanks to efforts like these, it’s at least somewhat harder for Carson City politicos to steal from gambling addicts. (The only time I’ve seen the Sun‘s crosstown rival undertake an online effort of this magnitude it was to promote CityCenter.)
Words of wisdom: “The only way to get revenue back is to increase the number of visits and increase the number of customers. It’s all in the volume. We’re not all that enthusiastic about getting people to gamble more than they’re comfortable. If someone comes to a casino with $100, I don’t really want to figure out how I can get them to go to an ATM and get more money. That’s their budget and I’m going to be content with that.” — Fine Point Group Managing Director Randall Fine.
I read that article about Randall Fine and it was very good. Mr. Fine mentioned Carl Icahn in the article and he said that Mr. Icahn is the smartest person he has ever worked for. Fontainebleau might work out in the long run after all if Mr. Icahn decides to keep the project instead of selling it.