Proponents of casinos should be just as unhappy with the process as anti-casino advocates should have been back when Sal DiMasi was using equally undemocratic measures to keep gambling off the table (so to speak). The Speaker’s actions shouldn’t be cause for celebration among pro-casino advocates, who should remain as suspicious and untrusting as their opponents of the legislature’s ways; what Beacon Hill giveth, Beacon Hill taketh away, based on the caprices and whims of whoever happens to sitting in the the Speaker’s and Committee chairs–as the history of what we can only loosely honor with the label of “legislating” on the matter shows. Getting what you want often isn’t as important as how ya got it. In this case, the manner in which our esteemed legislators operate, no matter what their given positions, really brings to life the phrase “business as usual!”:  

Two years ago, Speaker Sal DiMasi was an outspoken opponent of legalized gambling who insisted his followers vote his way.

He made sure gambling bills went to committees with anti-gambling chairmen.

DiMasi also strong-armed the Joint Revenue Committee into recommending a no vote on Patrick’s plan. An attempt to amend the bill to designate the revenue for local aid was crushed because it might have helped the bill get passed.

Different ends, but same old shit.

There are strong cases to be made both for and against casinos, and a plethora of studies (each of which needs to be read with a critical eye)that will eat up a good chunk of your time if you’re seriously interested in the issue. This stuff isn’t susceptible to slogans, and for every study there’s a counter study. The  matter is hardly black-and white, and covers a wide range of matters ranging from net financial gains/losses by each state that has legalized casinos, to some very dubious propositions on both sides regarding job gains and losses and the overall value of said jobs (usually based on one sole and possibly outdated study alone….), to issues of community input and control to some serious questions of the proper role of the state in protecting us from ourselves. (I just finished reading the Spectrum summary conducted for Division of Special Revenue in CT [June 2009]–it runs 400 pages, and man, while written for the layperson [thank god–a lot of these studies rely on such highly creative mathematical models that it would take a Masters in Statistics to really understand them], it’s dense with numbers–but VERY eye-opening no matter what your predisposition on this matter). In other words, before the electorate forms an opinion, there’s a lotta regions, a lotta numbers, a shitload of variables, and, hey, even some political theory to be considered.

I’m in no rush to form a judgment one way or the other–there are so many different apples and oranges in the air simultaneously when trying to figure this out, so many competing and conflicting claims that need to be somehow balanced, that it’s gonna take me some time. It’d sure be nice were the legislature to grant me that time, and the option to hear daily accounts of the review process in the press from a wide range of experts and those citizens who are both for and against.

The fact that the electorate is somewhat split on the issue, and the fact of the sheer complexity involved, would sure seem to make public review and debate critical.

The management of this issue by the Speaker is representative of the reasons why both the left and right are rising up against the entrenched way of doing business, whether on Beacon Hill or in Washington; while they may be very much opposed in their solutions, many of us on both ends of the political spectrum are agreed that the first step to resolving them is (re?)-creating a genuinely representative democracy at all levels.

The governor’s office and the state legislature would seem to be a good place to start.