I’m not sure how successful an approach this will be, but I guess it’s better than nothing.
Expanding gaming requires a vote of two-thirds of the legislature, with voters getting the final say. A new poll done for the Chronicle and the state’s other major newspapers found 60 percent favored an expansion of gaming.
Expanding gaming may be a last-ditch attempt at saving racing. Without slots, Texas track operators say, they won’t have the additional revenue to increase purses and attract quality horses .
“You will likely see the fall of several players,” predicted Andrea Young, president and chief operating officer of Sam Houston Race Park . She wouldn’t say whether Sam Houston would be one of them.
Bryan Brown, chief executive of Retama Park in Selma, had an even more fatalistic view if lawmakers can’t be persuaded.
“Our industry, over a period of years, will just disappear,” Brown said. Retama hasn’t turned a profit since opening in 1995.
I blogged about the poll in question the other day. I have to say, this is not an approach I’d take if I were the horse racing industry. There were plenty of Republicans who were perfectly content to let the US auto manufacturers die back during the early days of the economic crisis. If this is the pitch, I have no trouble imagining it being recast as a “bailout” in the 2012 primaries. Stick with your projections of economic benefit for the state and hope for the best, I say. The gloomier the budget picture and the harder it gets to make cuts, the better it’ll sound to them.
To be fair, the racetracks did also talk up the economic benefits they say allowing them to have slot machines would bring:
Under the racing industry’s proposed legislation, the state would get 30 percent of the slots revenue. The tracks would keep 58 percent, and the remaining 12 percent would be earmarked for purses and other items for the horse and greyhounds industries, Hooper said.
If slots pass, Sam Houston’s Young said it will spend $350 million for new facilities, gaming terminals and other amenities. Retama expects to spend $200 million.
Young pointed to Parx Casino in Philadelphia as a venue she’d like to emulate, raving about how well it has integrated slots (and table games) with horse racing.
“It feels like you’re walking into a Vegas-style casino,” she said, referring to the layout and finishes.
I still don’t think much of their odds of success, but this is as sensible an approach as you could expect.
I nearly did a spit take when I read this:
The Texas Gaming Association, which represents casino operators, is proposing four to eight casinos. Three would be in the largest counties – Harris, Bexar and Dallas – and at least one other would be in a coastal town, said spokesman Scott Dunaway.
Whoa! I’ve been following this issue for awhile now, and this is the first time I can recall seeing any specific location mentioned for a casino, especially Harris County. In the past, the talk has always been that there would be local elections to determine whether or not a given city would allow a casino to be built there. (Go take a listen to my interview with Joe Jaworski, now Galveston’s Mayor, in which we discussed this issue, for an example.) I was sufficiently surprised by this that I contacted Harris County Judge Ed Emmett, to see what his position was. Judge Emmett told me that it was the first he had heard of it as well. As such, I don’t know if this is something new, something that’s always been there but is just now coming out, or if the story got it wrong.
Whatever the case, the casino interests say they will be releasing their financial projections next week. I can hardly wait to see it, and I’ll be sure to write about it when I do.