Rhode Island and Massachusetts state governments are embarked on new methods of raising money. In the Ocean State, that means legal sports gambling. And in Massachusetts, it’s recreational marijuana. The Public’s Radio political analyst Scott MacKay parses the implications of marijuana in Massachusetts and sports gambling in Rhode Island.
The first day of legal sports betting last week at Rhode Island’s Twin River Casino drew a big, overwhelmingly male flock of gamblers, all lined up to put their money on professional and college athletics. Carrying tip sheets, it didn’t look like most of these folks new to betting..
The politicians showed up too. Senate President Dominick Ruggerio, D-North Providence, admitted it wasn’t his first time as he dropped down $20 on the Houston Texans against the Tennessee Titans. House Speaker Nick Mattiello, D-Cranston, said he isn’t a gambler and said that he “couldn’t recall” ever betting on sports previously, not even a Super Bowl bet or an office pool on the NCAA basketball tournament. Both Mattiello and Ruggerio won their bets, with the money going to their favorite charities: a statewide food bank and a Cranston animal shelter.
It wasn’t that long ago that every city north of the Apponaug-Dixon line had a corner store or tavern that served as a bookie joint. This lucrative business was run by organized crime. If you didn’t pay up after losing bets, your limb and even your life could be in jeopardy.
Massachusetts rolled out two venues for buying legal marijuana. The two sites were in rural communities –Leicester and the college town of Northampton. Opening day sales were big. The only glitch was huge traffic jams in Leicester, where some residents said at a town meeting that they felt like prisoners in their town.
The pols love sin taxes. They are always looking for new ways to finance government without raising sales, income or property taxes. Pot and gambling money can mask the actual costs of running governments. Whether this is a smart in the long run is problematic.
Politicians don’t often think about the future. They are focused on the next election or winning approval of the next budget, regardless of how many accounting gimmicks it takes. This is the type of thinking that has given us public worker pension red ink across the nation, with Providence city government as a prime example.
Rhode Island grappled with legal gambling for years. The last anti-gambling governor was Lincoln Almond, who served in the 1990s. The debate then was over casinos. Advocates of casinos pointed to Connecticut, the first New England state to get into the casino racket in a big way. The argument was that Connecticut’s casinos would give that state an advantage over Rhode Island in generating government money to fix roads and fund schools.
Yet, a generation later, Connecticut is New England’s budget basket case. Deficits have ballooned and some of state’s iconic companies, most prominently General Electric, have left. Gambling is already the third largest source of Rhode Island’s state government revenue.
As then governor-Almond warned, once you let the camel’s nose of gambling under the tent, there is no turning back. Casinos employ hundreds. The state gets addicted to the money. Some gamblers get addicted too. One question rarely asked at the Statehouse is whether the social problems gambling causes should outweigh the money it brings.
States have little experience with sports wagering. It was restricted to Las Vegas until a U.S. Supreme Court decision last year. Ruggerio seeks to add online sports betting when the General Assembly reconvenes on New Year’s Day. Keeping children from betting won’t be easy if betting on mobile phone apps catches on in a big way.
Pot is a somewhat different story. The nation’s War on Drugs that began in the Nixon Administration has been an abject failure. It hasn’t kept marijuana away from kids. It has also led to jailing young people, too many of them minorities. There have always been more pot busts in Roxbury and South Providence than at leafy campuses such as Harvard or Brown. Still, some in the addiction recovery community oppose legal weed sales because they see it as a gateway to more serious drugs.
Both states are in uncharted territory. But this we know: in cozy New England, what one state does to raise money will inevitably be adopted by neighbors. So pot sales will likely be next for Rhode Island And sports betting for Massachusetts.
Scott MacKay’s commentary can be heard every Monday morning at 6:45 and 8:45 and at 5:44 in the afternoon. You can also follow his political analysis at our “on Politics” blog at ThePublic’sRadio.org
Scott MacKay is political analyst for The Public’s Radio. You can hear his commentary every Monday morning at 6:45 and 8:45 and at 5:44 in the afternoon.
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