Slots and Expanded Gambling for Rockingham Park?

By Jim on December 11th, 2008

Good article in today’s Concord Monitor.

A Las Vegas-based casino operator is prepared to spend nearly a half billion dollars to bring slot machines to Rockingham Park in Salem.

Millennium Gaming, which has held an option to buy Rockingham Park since 2005, says slot machines would transform the racetrack into a gambling and entertainment mecca and would bring millions of dollars in tax revenue to the state. The announcement came yesterday from a newly formed coalition of gambling, business and labor union representatives who said expanded gambling would rescue New Hampshire from its budget problems.

Millennium proposed legalizing slot machines more than a year ago, but it met with no success. Coalition members said the recent downturn in the economy makes their pitch more appealing than in the past. They predicted impressive numbers if Rockingham Park brought in slots: up to 4 million visitors a year, 70 percent of them from out of state; $200 million in annual tax revenue; and $450 million in capital improvements at the track, resulting in thousands of jobs for New Hampshire workers.

The improvements would include rebuilding the park’s grandstand and constructing a temporary building for gamblers to play in until work finished. Edward Callahan, general manager of Rockingham Park, said money collected from slot machines would provide larger purses for horse racing and allow track officials to bring back live thoroughbred races, which have not been held at the track since 2002. The track now hosts harness racing and simulcasts other events.

I hope the slots succeed. If New Hampshire doesn’t do it I think that Massachusetts eventually will.

I’m dismayed by some of the ignorant comments at the end of the article touting a sales and income tax. I responded twice and pointed out why both are a bad idea for New Hampshire. I find it very annoying that people cavalierly fling the words “sales tax” around without understanding what it could do to our state’s economy. Hopefully such people are still a tiny minority in New Hampshire.

The push against gambling makes no sense to me given how the state benefits from the lottery. I personally hate buying lottery tickets but if there was a destination casino here in New Hampshire I would undoubtedly go to be entertained and perhaps play a few games of this or that. I’m a big boy and if I choose to spend a few of my dollars playing blackjack or slots then that ought to be my affair.