Proposal includes casinos for Chicago, Rockford, Danville, Lake County,
South Suburbs of Chicago, Williamson County, plus video slot machines galore.

On February 28th, the Illinois Senate passed SB 7 – a massive gambling bill – by a vote of 31-26.  Yet for lawmakers with an insatiable hunger for revenue at the expense of well-documented social costs, it wasn’t enough.

Yesterday, the Illinois Senate passed an amended version of SB 7 to exploit even more citizens, by a vote of  33-24 with 1 voting present.  (See roll call chart below.)

This oppressive and myopic legislation is sponsored by Illinois Senators Terry Link (D-Gurnee), Dave Syverson (R-Rockford), Mattie Hunter (D-Chicago) and Donne Trotter (D-Chicago). The passage of this bill demonstrates that our state lawmakers are not serious about solving the fiscal problems of the state — specifically the wasteful spending and bloat that is Illinois government.  Instead, a majority of politicians in the Illinois Senate gave their stamp of approval to an unstable and unfair source of “revenue,” while ignoring the many social costs that come with a vice like gambling.

According to Illinois Churches in Action, this legislation will give special perks to the gambling industry while soaking hard working families:

SB 7 includes a massive casino for Chicago, slots machines at Chicago Airports, additional land-based casinos for Rockford, Danville, Lake County, South Suburbs of Chicago, Williamson County Winery, and at 4 racetracks.

SB 7 allows progressive jackpots at casinos and video gambling establishments and expands video gambling by doubling the maximum bet and more than doubling the jackpot.

The bill lowers taxes on slot machines and table games and gives tax breaks to racetracks and casinos.  SB 7 will not solve the budget problem, but it will increase addiction and problem gambling.

Take ACTION: Click HERE to send your state representative an email or a fax to tell them “NO MORE GAMBLING — PERIOD.” Don’t delay in speaking out. With only 2 weeks left before state lawmakers adjourn for the summer, this gambling bill may move fast.

Background

In addition to the 10 casinos Illinois currently has, residents face the prospect of an additional 6 casinos (for a total of 16), making Illinois a top contender for the most anti-family and predatory gambling state in the nation. If we consider all the video slot machines currently in the state, plus all the Lottery fleecing “games,” we are well underway to securing the title of  being the top “swindle state” in America.

Think about the devastation a casino would bring to the poorest families in Chicago.  Impoverished working poor would be encouraged by this foolish policy to seek out the elusive “pot of gold” — and the “key” to happiness by gambling away their meager resources.  To make matters worse, they would have easy access to a Chicago casino via public transportation.

Moreover, the National Gambling Impact Study Commission estimated that approximately 15 million U.S. citizens have a gambling problem and/or are pathological gambling addicts. Their research also shows that addiction rates double within 50 miles of a casino. Think of all the people within a 50-mile radius of 15 casinos and how many new gambling addicts the state will help produce with this foolish proposal. There is enormous potential for many new gambling addicts in Chicago-land alone. How is this good public policy?

The American Psychiatric Association says that symptoms of pathological gambling include the following: lying about the amount of time or money spent gambling, needing to borrow money to get by due to gambling losses, gambling larger amounts of money to try to win back previous losses, and committing crimes to obtain money to gamble.

Researchers believe that crimes committed by compulsive gamblers are often under-reported. Some of these crimes include writing bad checks, check forgery, fraud, and embezzlement.

Some gamblers turn to street crime. The National Institute of Justice reported that 30 percent of pathological gamblers who were arrested in Las Vegas and Des Moines admitted that they had committed a robbery within the past year. About 13 percent of them admitted they had assaulted someone to get money.

Although some people win at the casinos, winning consistently is rare. And those people who believe they will win their money back after a losing streak are deluding themselves. The truth is one in five people addicted to gambling will file for bankruptcy. Casinos would not be able to stay in business if people won more than they lost.

Studies also show that both divorce and suicide rates are higher for pathological gamblers than non-gamblers. Gamblers Anonymous surveyed approximately 400 members and found that two-thirds had thought of suicide, 77 percent had wanted to die, and 47 percent had a definite plan to kill themselves.

Economics professor, Earl Grinols, says in his book, Gambling in America: Costs and Benefits, the annual cost of one addicted gambler to society is $10,330. Grinols argues that the costs of casino-derived revenues exceed the benefits by a factor of more than 3 to 1.

It is clear, the social costs of gambling far outweigh any perceived benefits.

How did they vote?

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Written by David Frum

Baltimore is a troubled city, as you know from The Wire. Like many troubled cities, Baltimore has turned to casino gambling as its solution. On August 26, a new Caesar’s casino will open on the site of an old chemical factory, a little more than 2 miles from the famous Inner Harbor and Camden Yards baseball stadium. Yet there’s already reason to expect the casino to disappoint everyone involved: the city looking for tax revenues, the workers hoping for jobs, the investors expecting hefty returns.

Outside of Las Vegas—now home to only 20 percent of the nation’s casino industry—casino gambling has evolved into a downscale business. Affluent and educated people visit casinos less often than poorer people do for the same reasons that they smoke less and drink less and weigh less.

Unfortunately for the casino industry’s growth hopes, downscale America has less money to spend today than it did before 2007. Nor is downscale America sharing much in the post-2009 recovery. From a news report on the troubles of a recently opened Ohio casino:

Ameet Patel, general manager of the property, says the softness in casino revenue that he and other operators have seen has been driven by a key demographic: women older than 50 who used to bet $50 to $75 per visit. The weak recovery has squeezed their gambling budgets, and their trips to casinos are fewer, he says.

What’s true in Ohio applies nationwide. Casino revenues had still not recovered their 2007 peaks as of the spring of 2014, when again they went into reverse in most jurisdictions. Moody’s now projects that casino revenues will drop through the rest of 2014 and all of 2015, slicing industry earnings by as much as 7.5 percent.

Weaker earnings are being divided among ever multiplying numbers of casinos. Baltimore’s casino will be the fourth to open in Maryland, with a fifth soon to rise down the Potomac from Washington, DC. Maryland’s casinos compete with a clutch of new casinos in Philadelphia and Delaware.

Why so much building? Cities are authorizing more casinos for exactly the same reason that the existing casinos are losing business: the weak national economy. Casinos promise a new and easy flow of revenues to hard pressed local governments.

The promise however comes increasingly hedged with fine print.

The casino market is nearing saturation, if it is not already saturated. Two casinos have closed in Mississippi this year. Four have closed or will soon close in Atlantic City, including the glitziest hotel on the boardwalk, Revel.

Casinos that do stay in business yield less to their towns and states. Revenues from Maryland’s first casino, in Perryville, at the northern tip of Chesapeake Bay, have already dropped 30 percent from their peak in 2008, and are expected to decline even more rapidly in future as competitors proliferate.

Yet the truly bad news about casinos is not found in the tax receipts. It’s found in the casinos’ economic and social impact on the towns that welcome them.

Until the late 1970s, no state except Nevada permitted casino gambling. Then Atlantic City persuaded its state legislature to allow casinos, in hope of reviving the prosperity of the battered resort town. Hotels sprung up along the seafront. Thousands of people were hired. And the rest of Atlantic City … saw no benefits at all. All these years later, it still has desperate trouble sustaining even a single grocery store.

No one should look to casinos to revive cities, “because that’s not what casinos do.” So explained the project manager for a new Wynn casino rising near Philadelphia. He’s right, but it has taken a surprisingly long time for city governments to acknowledge a fact that was well understood by the 19th-century Americans who suppressed gambling in the decades after the Civil War.

The impact of casinos on neighboring property values is “unambiguously negative,” according to the economists at the National Association of Realtors. Casinos don’t encourage non-gaming businesses to open nearby, because the people who most often visit casinos do not wander out to visit other shops and businesses. A casino is not like a movie theater or a sports stadium, offering a time-limited amusement. It is designed to be an all-absorbing environment that does not release its customers until they have exhausted their money.

The Institute for American Values has gathered the best evidence on the social consequences of casinos. That evidence should worry any responsible city government.

People who live close to a casino are twice as likely to become problem gamblers as people who live more than 10 miles away. As casinos have become more prevalent, so has problem gambling: in some states, the evidence suggests a tripling or even quadrupling of the number of problem gamblers.

While the gaming industry argues that the total number of problem gamblers remains small, that small minority is crucial to the industry’s profits: One Canadian study found that the 75 percent of casino customers who gamble most casually provide only 4 percent of casino revenues. A range of studies reviewed by IAV estimated that between 40 to 60 percent of casino revenues are earned from problem gamblers. And as Amy Zietlow observed in an important study commissioned by IAV, those problem gamblers increasingly are drawn from the ranks of the vulnerable elderly. Half of casino visitors are over age 50, but casinos market themselves to the over 70 and even over 80 market, to whom gambling offers an escape from boredom and loneliness into a hypnotic zone of rapid-fire electronic stimuli.

As casino expansion reaches its limits, the towns and cities that turned to gambling to escape their problems may discover that they have accepted a sucker’s bet: local economies that look worse than ever, local residents tempted into new forms of self-destructive behavior, and a dwindling flow of cash to show for it all.

This article was originally published in the Atlantic.

Gambling revenue promises are rarely met. Gambling interests are pushing for a vote on a massive expansion bill during the final days of the legislative session. SB 1849 legalizes 11 more casinos, including a city-owned casino in Chicago and six racetrack casinos.

During the past 21 years, legislators have legalized riverboat gambling, off-track betting, dockside gambling, advanced deposit wagering, Internet lottery and video gambling. With all that gambling revenue coming in, why does the state have such a large backlog of unpaid bills?

There would be little concern about how much gambling we have in Illinois if it were not for the social problems and costs that gambling creates. Casinos do not just shift crime from neighboring regions, but create crime, according to a study by Professors Earl Grinols and David Mustard. For every $1 of revenue gambling that interests indicate is being contributed in taxes, it costs taxpayers $3 or more in social welfare, criminal justice and regulatory costs. The average cost to society per pathological gambler per year is $13,586.

One purpose of the bill is to keep and attract Illinois residents to gamble. The presence of a gambling facility within 50 miles roughly doubles the prevalence of problem and pathological gambling, according to the National Gambling Impact Study Commission. The rate of pathological gambling is significantly higher among minorities and low income individuals.

Gov. Pat Quinn, who has continually opposed slot machines at racetracks, has said the state cannot gamble its way to prosperity. Call your legislators at (217) 782-2000 and the governor at (800) 642-3112 and ask them to Vote “no” on SB 1849.

It’s not enough just to be concerned!
We need you to take action too!

Late last month we alerted you to the threat of yet another push to expand predatory gambling in the state of Illinois.  In today’s Chicago Sun-Times, columnist Michael Sneed reports that Governor Patrick Quinn “had a ‘nice’ chat recently with Arlington Racetrack impresario Dick Duchossois” at the Kentucky Derby.  The suggestion is that progress was made in negotiating for a Chicago casino and financial help for the failing horse racing industry.

Confirming that rumor, IFI lobbyists tell us that a new gambling expansion proposal is imminent.  

Gov. Quinn has consistently said that he’s opposed to video slot machines at tracks. But State Representative Lou Lang (D-Skokie), perhaps the state’s leading proponent for gambling expansion,  continues to push this anti-family, anti-business agenda.  Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel is also lobbying for a downtown casino, promising to invest the city’s ill-gotten booty into investment projects including school renovations and other capital projects.

With two weeks to go in the Spring Session of the Illinois General Assembly, our state lawmakers need to hear from their constituents.  Make no mistake, your state representative and state senator are hearing from dozens of pro-gambling lobbyists, who are putting on a full court press in these final days of the Session.  Every lawmaker needs to hear from dozens and dozens of people back home in their districts.

Take ACTION:  Click HERE to send an email or a fax to both state lawmakers.  Tell them to stop playing games with gambling expansion and to focus on the hard work the people of Illinois sent them to Springfield to tackle:  Pension and Medicaid Reform.