People have always gambled. Ancient Romans wagered during their annual Saturnalia festival, and all four Gospels depict Roman soldiers gambling for Jesus' garments at the Crucifixion scene. The Greek word for justice, dike, derives from the term for casting dice.
In America, gambling has undergone a remarkable transformation in the public mind over the last half-century: It was a sin, then merely a vice; now it's entertainment. Once it achieved the latter status, politicians supplanted gangsters as the strategists for how best to make money from gambling.
And there's a lot of money at stake, because a lot of Americans gamble. If you combined the annual revenues of McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's and Starbucks, you'd have only half the money Americans gamble each year.
No wonder Gov. Andrew Cuomo and state legislators are on the verge of approving a constitutional amendment to set up full-fledged casino gambling in New York. A tiny tax on the revenues that could be generated by a few casinos could fund a lot of highway repairs, maintain thousands of classroom teaching jobs and cover the basic needs of millions of poor and sick people.
Chances seem good that before the Legislature adjourns this month, it will go along with Cuomo's idea of sending to voters a plan to allow three casinos upstate, to be followed five years later with up to five in the New York City area.
And with an eye on being ready to compete for one of those upstate licenses, a group of investors this week laid out a vision for an expansion of the half-casino now allowed at the otherwise moribund harness racing track in Saratoga Springs. It's across the street from the famous thoroughbred track that is one of America's premiere venues for horse racing.
The plan is big: a $30 million investment of private funds, yielding a 120-room hotel, restaurants and a 24,000-square-foot event center — plus, of course, plenty of room for table games (assuming voters OK them) and slot machines.
Backers say the plan will produce a lot of jobs and economic activity. The idea seems to have the enthusiastic support of most of the Saratoga business establishment, which is quite a turnaround from just a few years ago, when the prevailing sentiment of the Saratoga elite was that an expansion of gaming would imperil the flat track. Now the notion seems to be that Saratoga can become upstate's gambling mecca, and that people at all income levels will get richer as a result.
Nobody likes a naysayer. But:
Before the state settles on Saratoga as the site of a casino, we need to insist that officials weigh the impact on the Capital Region as a whole, and not just one community or the couple hundred people who would be directly employed by a new casino.
Money is spent by the bushel at casinos, but the operators' profit comes mainly from the wagers. Ever wonder why a Las Vegas headliner can play to a small crowd for a modest ticket price? Answer: A casino operator can lose money on that show because an hour later the audience will be laying down a bundle on a blackjack table.
Backers of the Saratoga casino are banking on that. And where will they find a crowd?
Probably from the audiences that now attend shows at other venues around here: Proctors in Schenectady, the Times Union Center and the Palace in Albany, the Saratoga City Center and Saratoga Performing Arts Center. Tickets to those places, by the way, aren't subsidized by casino revenues.
When you're hungry at a casino, you can amble over to a fine restaurant in the next room. Operators of bars and restaurants near the region's current entertainment spots also may not see a big casino in Saratoga Springs as fair competition.
Before New York gives away a license to draw so many millions of dollars from our community, it should take steps to protect some of our region's existing cultural treasures.
In Massachusetts, where casino expansion is already under way, the law requires casino operators to strike deals that will diminish the dollar impact on competing performing arts venues. A planned casino on Springfield, for example, won't be allowed to book acts for big audiences.
Here, some good thought already has gone into helping potential Saratoga casino competitors. State Sen. Betty Little, R-Queensbury, who chairs the Senate Cultural Affairs Committee, advocates tax breaks for Broadway shows that open their first road productions upstate. That notion of extending Broadway up the Hudson Valley could bring big road shows back from Providence, where such a tax break already exists, to Schenectady, Utica or Buffalo. That's smart financial aid for places that would likely be hurt by casino expansion nearby.
New York is about to bet the economic future of a lot of communities on casino expansion. It could be a dumb bet if it doesn't figure out first what pocket that money is coming from and how to keep it from being empty.