Rolling the Dice

Coverage of casino licensing and the gambling referendum

Gaming the casino job numbers

By CommonWealth Staff 0 Comments Mar 2, 2008

Today’s Boston Sunday Globe features a front-page story by Sean Murphy questioning the Patrick administration’s claim that 30,000 construction jobs would be created if the governor’s proposal for three casinos were approved. The Globe story calls Patrick’s jobs estimate "excessively optimistic," and backs up that contention with plenty of evidence from similar projects that generated(...)

Arlington bets on casino revenue

By CommonWealth Staff Municipal Government 0 Comments Jan 31, 2008

Gov. Deval Patrick’s proposed budget for fiscal 2009 includes revenue from casino licensing fees, even though casino gambling has not yet been approved by the Legislature (see Boston Globe story by Frank Phillips). Now town goverments may follow Patrick’s lead, if a story by Shauna Stavely in the Arlington Advocate is any indication. Stavely reports(...)

Megabucks

By CommonWealth Staff 0 Comments Oct 7, 2007

The Sunday New York Times has a story and interactive map on state lotteries. Massachusetts is singled out as having "the highest lottery spending per resident, at $699, and the highest portion of lottery sales that go to prizes, at 72 percent." At $4.5 billion, the Bay State is second only to New York in(...)