The question for Tiverton :

"The question for Tiverton is simple: are you willing to risk the future health of your beautiful home town based upon the promises made by a casino operator? In typical casino fashion, the odds will always be stacked against the gambler. Another casino in Rhode Island, planted in Tiverton, is a lose/lose situation especially for the Town of Tiverton."”

To the editor:

Twin River management has begun a statewide campaignto persuade Rhode Island voters to approve the casino referendum, Question 1, on the ballot in November for the construction of a $75 million casino on 45 acres of land off Route 81 in Tiverton.

This campaign comes on the heels of Twin River’s campaign last summer with 35-40 charrettes hosted by Twin River Chairman John Taylor to drum up support throughout Tiverton.

This week, Mr. Taylor's kick-off campaign is expected to be joined by representatives from the Greater Providence Chamber of Commerce and the Rhode Island Building and Construction Trades Council. If not in person, the Governor of Rhode Island, the Speaker of the House, and the President of the Senate will certainly be there with Mr. Taylor in spirit.

The campaign will point to the 550-600 new jobs the casino will ultimately create along with hundreds of jobs in construction.

Here’s the rub! That’s if they win the permission of Tiverton voters. The population of Tiverton is approximately 15,780. On Election Day, the final vote in Tiverton determines the go/no-go decision for the casino. The vote in Tiverton could come down to as few as 5-10 votes one way or the other.

Tiverton is a beautiful East Bay town nestled along the Sakonnet River and Mount Hope Bay. Tiverton is like many small towns in Rhode Island — property taxes are high and the town is strapped for cash. We believe many ‘Tivertonians’ could care less about gambling or the casino. They are focused on the “promised $3 million/year” in tax relief.

The question for Tiverton is simple: are you willing to risk the future health of your beautiful home town based upon the promises made by a casino operator? In typical casino fashion, the odds will always be stacked against the gambler. Another casino in Rhode Island, planted in Tiverton, is a lose/lose situation especially for the Town of Tiverton.

Rhode Islanders generally, and ‘Tivertonians’ particularly, will ultimately pay for it in losses in the casino and businesses in the town.

In the long run, when the casino is no longer profitable, the casino will pick up their chips and walk away in typical casino fashion, a la Atlantic City. So, why should you care?

Ten reasons to oppose the expansion of state sponsored predatory gambling in Rhode Island:

• Any short-term benefits from a Tiverton “convenience” casino would be heavily outweighed by its longer-term economic and social costs.

• The Northeast is becoming oversaturated with casinos, fewer out-of-staters would visit the proposed casino in Tiverton to gamble, especially with the new Plainville Casino and the $1 billion proposed First Light Casino planned in Taunton by the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe.

• The proposed convenience casino would keep some residents from going out of state to gamble. But its main effect would be to expand casino gambling in Rhode Island by encouraging current Rhode Island gamblers to gamble more frequently, and by encouraging local people, who do not currently gamble, to do so.

Moreover, if casino operators win approval for a Tiverton area casino, it will be Tiverton area people and local businesses that will be sucked dry by a business which will do anything to part them from their money and their customers. The aim of the casino is not to send gamblers elsewhere to spend their money (with local businesses), but rather to engage their customers to spend all they can within casino walls.

• Those 550-600 jobs, the profits, and the tax revenue produced by a convenience casino would be funded overwhelmingly by gambling losses of Rhode Island residents generally, and by East Bay folks particularly, which would merely redistribute existing money within the state.

• With the Northeast facing a casino glut, it makes little sense from an economic development standpoint to open another casino in Tiverton. Casino winnings are flat or shrinking in many states, a third of New Jersey’s casinos have closed, and Connecticut’s casino revenue is down 40% from its peak. A 2016 study by the Nelson Rockefeller Institute of Government in New York warns, “… that while new casinos may generate short-run increases in public revenues, those revenues can quickly reverse and decline.”

• Casinos have been increasingly turning to part-time jobs to reduce wage costs and eliminate medical benefits. Casino workers interviewed in a recent New Jersey study said they would not recommend casino jobs for their children because of the shift from full-time jobs with benefits to part-time positions that do not offer enough pay and benefits to sustain a family.

• Casino gambling represents a regressive tax that hits low-wage earners, the poor, minorities, and the elderly the hardest, thereby contributing to economic and social inequality.

• State-sponsored predatory casino gambling spreads gambling addiction, debt, bankruptcies, broken families, an increase in suicide and crime, particularly embezzlement, within 10 miles of the facility. Multiple studies show that 35-50% of casino gambling profits come from problem gamblers.

• According to a landmark report from the Institute for American Values, a non-partisan think tank, the new local and regional casinos drain wealth from communities, weaken nearby businesses, hurt property values, and reduce civic participation, family stability, and other forms of social capital that are at the heart of a successful community.

• More gambling is not an answer to Rhode Island’s financial problems. In fact, once all the economic and social costs are factored in, economist Earl Grinols, the country’s leading independent expert on the subject, concludes that, on average, the cost-to-benefit ratio of bringing a casino into a new area is greater than 3-1.

Fr. John E. Higginbotham, Rector, Holy Trinity Episcopal Church, Tiverton,

The Interfaith clergy of Tiverton and Little Compton: Rev. Charles Simonson, Rev. William Sterrett, Rev. Missy Quay, Rev. Joseph Runner, and Rev. Rebecca Floyd Marshall

Sources include:

Gambling in America: Costs and Benefits, by Earl L. Grinols, Cambridge University Press, 2004;

High Stakes: The Rising Cost of America’s Gambling Addiction, by S. Skolnik, Beacon Press, 2011;

Addiction by Design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas, by Natasha Dow Schull, Princeton University Press, 2012; Why Casinos Matter, by Institute for American Values, www.americanvalues.org, 2013;

Just One More Hand: Life in the Casino Economy, Mutari & Figart, Rowman &

Littlefield, 2015; The Jersey Journal, Terrence T. McDonald, January 29, 2016.