SCARBOROUGH — Over the past several weeks, there’s been a lot of talk about controlling casinos, in the Legislature’s Veterans and Legal Affairs Committee, in the hallways of the State House and in a May 3 Portland Press Herald editorial (“Our View: Maine does not owe its casinos a monopoly”). Over the next several weeks, as L.D. 1280 moves through the House and Senate, there will be more.

We think the state has already done a good job of controlling casinos – there are, after all, only two, and as recently as 2011, voters in every county in Maine voted against approving a third casino.

L.D. 1280, “An Act to Provide Income Tax Relief by Expanding Gaming Opportunities,” is an attempt at a money grab, imposing higher fees and taxes on the developer of a new casino in Cumberland or York county.

Higher fees and taxes will not control gambling in Maine because gambling interests’ pockets are very deep. During discussions within the committee, not one entity or lobbyist balked at a $50 million fee, yet the fee in the bill is only $5 million.

Maine’s two casinos were approved by the voters of this state – neither was a slam dunk. And according to a recent survey, Maine voters would not approve a third casino in Maine.

In Scarborough, where we live, casino votes have failed six times. But Scarborough Downs keeps coming back time after time, along with its out-of-state partners trying to convince residents that our streets will be lined with gold.

Quick, easy money does not make for healthy long-term economic development, which has been the cornerstone of the work done here in Scarborough and helped sustain us through the horrible recession.

Towns like Scarborough and established local businesses could lose what they’ve built as a result of a casino. Economics 101 instructs that like businesses attract like businesses – adult entertainment businesses will attract adult entertainment businesses, not more bio-tech companies, which is what Scarborough has built its success on.

There’s a reason the Downs wants to make the process easier – it knows it would fail again in another statewide referendum, which is why the gambling bills recently workshopped in the Veterans and Legal Affairs Committee all eliminated the statewide vote mandate and replaced it with a county vote.

As former Scarborough town councilors, we find it disturbing that any business would want to circumvent a local vote, but the Downs has quietly and slowly whittled away at existing laws and done just that and more, including having “gambling” added as an allowable use in a local zoning ordinance.

Now it’s added the “county vote” tactic. This most certainly is not gambling control but rather a sneaky way around the citizens of this state and the citizens of Scarborough.

Bangor and Oxford have maintained that their facilities would save harness racing and create jobs, strengthening the local community. The reality is that after an infusion of over $80 million from the casinos, harness racing continues to fail, as it has across the U.S.

Hollywood Slots recently asked the city of Bangor to cut its property value $36.8 million. Oxford is just beginning to see new development around its casino, and right now well over half of Oxford’s revenue comes from Cumberland and York counties and New Hampshire.

Adding a third casino in southern Maine will only shift money to the new casino, displacing workers and hurting local economies that have grown dependent on the existing casinos.

An amendment to L.D. 1280 offered up during recent Veterans and Legal Affairs Committee deliberations sets aside $25 million for Oxford and Bangor if either or both casinos fail within two years of the opening of a third casino.

The committee’s recognition that the other two may fail indicates that it knows that 80 percent or more of the revenue comes from in-state residents anyway and is just shifted around, as the 2014 WhiteSand Gaming market feasibility study points out.

In other words, Maine should plan on the new casino stripping revenue from the other two casinos, which would have a detrimental effect on their communities.What the report fails to assess is the loss of jobs and economic effects on the communities of Oxford and Bangor if those casinos close – which were some of the very reasons cited that casinos were needed in these communities.

We encourage legislators to listen to their constituents. Time after time, they have said “no” to casinos and are saying “no” to another one. Two’s enough. Maine has so much more to offer.

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