In November of 2011, the General Court (i.e. the houses of the state legislature) of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts passed the Expanded Gaming Act, creating the Massachusetts Gaming Commission as an authority for granting licenses to and subsequently regulating the operations of three resort casino facilities (type-2 facilities including table games, one of which was to be located within Western Massachusetts/west of Worcester County) and a single slot parlor. The act was supported by and signed into law by Governor Deval Patrick. In 2013, a campaign began opposing the law and seeking, through ballot referendum, to formally repeal the Expanded Gaming Act (see "Repeal the casino deal," website: http://www.repealthecasinodeal.org/). The initial efforts to place the referendum on the November 2014 ballot for the Commonwealth hit an obstacle in September of 2013. Massachusetts Attorney General (and, now, prospective Democratic gubernatorial candidate) Martha Coakley ruled that the referendum could not be placed in the ballot because, if passed, the referendum would enact an unlawful taking of the private property of prospective casino operators without compensation by the Commonwealth. The group "Repeal the casino deal" appealed Coakley's decision to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) and, in the meantime, continued to accumulate the required number of signatures of registered Massachusetts voters (including mine, if memory serves!) for verification of threshold ballot requirements by the office of the Secretary of the Commonwealth. They apparently met a first threshold of 70,000 signatures by November of 2013, requiring the state legislature to take action on their request to include a gaming law repeal on the 2014 ballot. The legislature took no action, requiring that "Repeal the casino deal" collect an additional 11,500 valid signatures to secure a place on the ballot. The group has apparently collected more than 26,000 signatures, which are currently being validated by the Secretary of the Commonwealth. Today, the principal obstruction to a democratic resolution of the casino question in Massachusetts has been resolved. The SJC has ruled that a repeal of the Expanded Gaming Act by ballot referendum would not constitute an unlawful taking of private property by the Commonwealth under the terms of the Massachusetts constitution (see "Voters to decide fate of Massachusetts casino law," on Wall Street Journal (June 24, 2014), at: http://online.wsj.com/article/APb6d72362deb645829628278b1bce9687.html).
I have, in various instances, reflected on this blog about the nature and requirements of the democratic process, including whether or not democracy is strictly and solely limited to electoral processes and derivative outcomes (i.e. legislative processes through democratically elected bodies) or whether the democratic process extends beyond the formal limitations of electoral procedures to include direct action by citizens transcending legal/constitutionally assigned boundaries (e.g. demonstrations, revolutionary action). Again, in this instance, I do not really need to come up with a definitive statement on the limitations of what constitutes democracy (even if I lean toward a definition that includes the latter). It suffices to say, I think democracy won today - the electorate in Massachusetts (including me) deserves the chance to have its say on whether casino gaming is a valid and efficacious economic developmental strategy for the Commonwealth and for the individual communities that are under consideration for licensing of casino facilities. In the case of Western Massachusetts, this question fundamentally comes down to whether or not the placement of a casino in the south end neighborhood of Springfield would produce benefits for the Springfield metropolitan area as a whole greater than the costs it would inflict on the social and economic health of the city and of surrounding communities. As far as I am concerned, in my opinion as an educated economist, the answer to this question is that casino development is never a valid economic developmental strategy, and that the disproportionately distributed harm incurred by situating a casino in Springfield could never be counterbalanced by its meager possible benefits. In the next few months, I will have to articulate a more extensive argument here for why I oppose casino gaming. For now, I will simply say that I look forward to voting "Yes" (i.e. for repeal) in November.
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