As the House-Senate conference committee decides to hold closed-door meetings, it is important for the people of Massachusetts to weigh in meaningfully on this fast-tracking of legislation with incredible implications for the Commonwealth of MA.

Before passing the different versions of their casino bills, the House had refused to hold public hearings, while the Senate held one poorly announced hearing on the later versions of the bill (and one last year).

And House Speaker DeLeo, according to the State House News Service, is threatening to hold the rest of the legislative session hostage to his desires for slots at the racetracks (because of the 2 tracks in his district):

In an exclusive News Service interview, DeLeo indicated he would use the waning legislative calendar and his power over the agenda as a cudgel to force approval of slots for tracks, two of which are in or near his Winthrop-based district.

…

The increasingly bare-knuckled rhetoric from DeLeo, markedly more militant since hints of a compromise Tuesday, carry risk in that a Patrick racinos veto could come too close to the July 31 close of formal sessions for the Legislature to reverse or be sustained in the Senate. And a DeLeo stick-up of other bills over slots threatens to send lawmakers into the election season without major résumé bullets on a variety of high-visibility policy matters.

…

Asked whether he planned to block other legislation as a way of leveraging racinos into the bill, DeLeo replied, “Through the last weeks of session, there’s going to be a whole host of issues and pieces of legislation that sort of become intertwined in conference.”

“It’s inevitable that a lot of the legislation becomes intertwined, especially as you’re getting down to the final days of the session,” DeLeo said. “And, again, I just want to reiterate, as I did yesterday, jobs and local aid are very, very important to me, and I presume they’re important also to the governor and Senate president.”

Even though the House and Senate have passed their bills, it is still possible to stop the reckless fast-tracking of a future of Casino Democracy.

First of all, it’s absolutely critical that Massachusetts officials follow New Hampshire’s lead and study the costs in addition to the benefits of destination casino gambling through an independent cost-benefit analysis. Sign this petition to the Governor, House Speaker DeLeo, and Senate President Murray calling for such a study BEFORE heading down the path to corruption, addiction, and exploitation.

Sign this petition to state your opposition to predatory casinos in Massachusetts and your willingness to boycott any such institutions.

And Tweet this petition to ask all elected officials in Massachusetts to call upon the House-Senate conference committee to open up their deliberations.

Nothing is inevitable. But Casino Democracy depends on what gubernatorial candidate  Jill Stein called the “mythology of inevitability”. If the voters of Massachusetts want to send a loud message to casino proponents beating the drum of inevitability, they should throw their energies behind Stein’s campaign. As the only candidate not taking money from corporate lobbyists and the executives who hire them, and the only candidate vocally opposed to predatory casino gambling in MA, Stein’s campaign is the perfect vehicle to shred the logic of inevitability and chart a more thoughtful course.

Read this alert for ideas on how to do so.