Folding
on the River
The
Seneca Nation is focusing on the Cobblestone District on
the outskirts of downtown for Pataki’s casino. We’re glad
it won’t be smack in the middle of downtown, but that doesn’t
change the fact that it’s a bad idea in the first place.
We’ve
been hearing for a while now about all the wonderful money
the casino will bring the city. Mayor Masiello says it’ll
“bring great benefits.” But the state gets about four
times the share of the city and county combined. Ultimately,
the city and county will split about 4 or 5 million bucks
a year, which is peanuts when it comes to government.
But the dogma of the casino bringing in big cash has been
repeated enough that it is presented now as a given, as
in a recent report on Channel 2:
If
the proposed Buffalo casino becomes a done deal, it will
generate more jobs and money for the city. The question
is whether it will lift up the area around it.
But
that question has been answered time and again across
the country, as UB Prof Bruce Jackson illustrated in a
statement to the Common Council last week. Instead of
rewriting what Jackson said so eloquently, we’ll just
let him do the work:
Dollars
spent in a town are not spent once. They have a life,
a trajectory. They multiply. The money you spend in
a restaurant pays for the restaurant's physical plant,
its supplies and utilities, and its employees. If the
suppliers and utility providers and workers are within
the community, they in turn spend the money they get
from that restaurant, and that spending provides more
jobs and more taxes. All studies show that the arts
have the highest dollar multiplier of any kind of spending
within a community….
Casino
spending, on the other hand, has the lowest multiplier
effect of any kind of spending. It is money that doesn't
stay around; it is money sucked out of the community as
soon as it is spent. It goes to the owners and operators
of the casino, none of whom are community residents. In
our case, the casino owners wouldn't even pay local taxes...
The jobs provided by a casino are mostly minimum-wage
jobs, and they come at the cost of the jobs they displace
in the locally-owned establishments they drive out of
existence. The only economic benefit a community gets
from a tax-exempt casino is the money made during the
initial construction. That is a short-lived gain for a
few in trade for a long-term loss for the many: greedy
developers might be happy with that deal; it does nothing
for the rest of us and we should do anything we can to
reject it.
But,
according to the Buffalo News’ Donn Esmonde, we should
just bend over and take it like men:
I
am not a big fan of casinos, especially ones like this
that will mostly fleece the locals instead of bring in
outside dollars. But if we have to have one, and the governor
and state lawmakers cut that deal years ago, then a half-empty,
long-forgotten train building surrounded by parking lots
is the place.
Esmonde
is right that the location could have been worse, but
the truth is we don’t “have to have one.” The casino is
not a done deal, or wouldn’t be if the News had the stones
to oppose it. Public sentiment seems to be largely against
the casino, and there are citizens mobilizing against
it, notably Citizens Against Casino Gambling in Erie County
(despit their lack of acronym savvy).
It
is admittedly an uphill battle against corrupt politicians
and developers exploiting Native Americans in order to
circumvent state law. But opponents shouldn’t give up
by convincing ourselves something is inevitable, when
it’s only inevitable if they give up.
