Middleboro see casino in its cards

A casino in his town of Middleboro, Mass., may be inevitable, says Board of Selectmen Chairman Wayne C. Perkins. So in his view, the best position is to back the project and try to secure the best deal possible for his constituents.
The Mashpee Wampanoag tribe, with the help of its backers, is looking to build a $1 billion casino resort that would include a 1,500-room hotel by 2010.
A town meeting is planned in Middleboro for July 28, where the Board of Selectmen will ask voters to ratify a host agreement with the tribe for the casino. While the agreement has not been made public, the tribe has said it offered the town $7 million per year for 10 years and a pledge to spend $150 million in infrastructure improvements.
While the Middleboro Board of Selectmen has not taken a collective stance on the proposal, Perkins said he supports the casino, so long as the town can negotiate an equitable agreement.
Middleboro, like so many other Massachusetts communities, is struggling financially, Perkins said. Under Proposition 21?2, a Massachusetts law that prohibits municipalities in the state from increasing their property tax by more the 2.5 percent annually, the town has been forced to make major budget cuts.
Additionally, the backers of the casino have promised 2,700 construction jobs and more than 5,000 new permanent jobs should the project move forward. Given these factors, plus the fact that the casino could still be built without the town’s blessing, Perkins backs the project.
“If the tribe decides that Middleboro is where they want to be, and they’re willing to negotiate some type of a reasonable agreement with the town, I think that as an elected official, it would behoove me to support this,” Perkins said.
The process of bringing a casino to Massachusetts is different from the one Rhode Island has become accustomed to. When Harrah’s Entertainment sought to build a casino in the Ocean State through a partnership with the Narragansett Indian Tribe, they needed to persuade voters to amend the state constitution, and when they failed to do so, the project died.
But in Massachusetts, state voters would not have to approve anything. Instead, the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe’s federal recognition, which it received this year from the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs, entitles it to move forward. The process began when the tribe and its backers acquired 125 acres of land in Middleboro for $1.8 million. If it moves forward with the site plan, the tribe has to place the property in a trust and apply to the U.S. Department of the Interior to have the land recognized as its own.
At that point, the tribe would have to strike a deal with the Massachusetts legislature and the governor. The Middleboro meeting on July 28 involves the host agreement, which isn’t needed by the tribe but would guarantee revenue to – and good relations with – the town.
Some Middleboro residents are trying to at least slow down the process.
“The selectmen are agreeing to a $1 billion project … that no one in this town has seen the plans to,” said Rich Young, a board member for opposition group Casino Facts. He also believes the project is not as inevitable as some think, because Massachusetts presently has no laws permitting the type of gaming the facility is seeking to host.
But Young does believe one thing is inevitable if Massachusetts gets a casino: an explosion of gambling and problems associated with it, such as gambling addiction and drunk driving.
“This isn’t about one small town in Massachusetts; this is about what happens in all of New England,” Young said.
But could a Massachusetts casino cut into Rhode Island’s gaming revenue?
While opponents of the Harrah’s casino argued last year that it would devastate Rhode Island’s gaming facilities, Len Wolman – a partner in Lincoln’s Twin River and backer of the Mashpee Wampanoag proposal – said that the Massachusetts facility wont hurt his Rhode Island business.
Wolman – whose agreement with the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe is strictly for the development of the facility, not for its operation – was one of the developers that built Mohegan Sun in Uncasville, Conn., and still has rights to revenue from the facility. New England can handle more, he said.
“This is clearly a huge market and there is opportunity for growth,” Wolman said.