Casino Referendum

A Casino in Oxford County?

Rumford attorney Seth Carey has one thing right. The manufacturing jobs that sustained Oxford County in the 20th century are not coming back. Sure, the NewPage coated-paper mill is doing great, making more paper with fewer workers and less pollution than ever before. But a good chunk of that cash flow is going to service corporate debt. Less is coming back to the community as wages. So the region needs to diversify its economy, and Carey sees a casino as one way to do that.

With Carey's casino bill now on the November ballot, there will be a heated debate in which each side will accuse the other of hypocrisy. Casino proponents are justified in pointing figures at the State, which operates a lottery on the one hand while strictly regulating other forms of gambling on the other. But the Carey bill, as presently crafted, will also simultaneously promote and restrict gambling. If voters give the go-ahead, a casino will be allowed in Oxford County and nowhere else in Maine. Carey wants a state-chartered monopoly. One can hardly imagine the disgust that such an outcome would arouse in the Passamaquoddies, whose campaign for a racino in Washington County was shot down last November.

Earlier this year, Governor John Baldacci vetoed legislation to allow slot machines on Indian Island, the Penobscot reservation near Old Town. Baldacci insists that gambling is too important an issue for mere legislators to decide. In his view, a new gambling venue should be created only through a ballot initiative passed in a statewide election, such as the 2003 referendum that allowed the Hollywood Slots racino in Bangor. The message to Native Americans: get your own referendum. Any exception to the referendum process, in the Governor's words, "sends Maine down a perilous path, fraught with risk of unfair, arbitrary treatment among future gaming proposals."

His logic escapes me. The slippery slope was created when Maine first introduced a lottery in 1974. That was when Maine voters decided that gambling was OK. All regulation since then has been both unfair and arbitrary. The "path" that we are on right now leads us to annual referenda on specific gaming proposals. First it was a casino in Sanford, then in Washington County, now this year in Oxford County. Let's stop cluttering our ballots ad eternam and settle the question once and for all. Either gambling is allowed anywhere in Maine, subject to local approval, or it is allowed nowhere in Maine, in which case we dispense with the Maine State lottery. It is a matter of fairness and consistency.

UPDATE, 11-05-2008: On Election Day 54% of Maine's electorate voted against the Oxford County casino initiative (history here).