[ Home ]

[ Slots News ]

States Consider Gambling Budget Boost

Recently, The Wall Street Journal brought light to a phenomenon that we’ve seen growing for a long time, now. Many U.S. states are turning to gambling in a desperate attempt to bring new revenue into their sagging budgets, and trying to authorize expanded gambling such as the installation of slot machines. The WSJ article weighed in on the trend, detailing who had recently brought in slots, who was disappointed by the investment, and which states are currently on the bandwagon towards bringing one-armed bandits into their racetracks and casinos.

Right now, lawmakers in Texas, Maryland, Massachusetts, Kentucky, and Nebraska are all debating various bills that would bring slot machines into converted warehouses and airplane hangars, lavish luxury casino resorts, airports, and racetracks. Slots are looked at as an attractive economic concept because of the vast amount of money they can bring in for a reasonably modest investment. Also, if new casinos are being built, new jobs are created. On the other hand, moral conservatives argue that gambling is sinful and a sure recipe for increased prevalence of social ills that will cost the state money to deal with.

The matter remains contentious. In Massachusetts, Senator Tom Cahill is accused of inflating projected licensing fees to paint a rosier picture of slot machines being brought in. New Hampshire’s House just slammed the door resoundingly on a bill to bring slots in, and may as well have just stated: “not in my back yard!” Texas’s war over slots has both sides of the opposition clamoring and throwing stones, while Maryland is trying to justify putting terminals in BWI when they can’t even get contract bids for the five casinos approved by the Legislature last year.
 

Back to March 2009 Archive.