Boston City Council’s Economic Development & Planning Committee will oversee expanded gambling in the city after Council President Stephen Murphy canceled his plan to form an entirely new committee on gaming.
Vice Chair of the economic committee Councilor Matt O’Malley, of Jamaica Plain, said the move makes sense. He said it is important to have a strong debate about expanded gaming in Boston.
“For me it was less about which committee this matter was referred to,” O’Malley said in a phone interview with The Daily Free Press. “The ultimate goal should be making sure this debate is a robust, substantive one, and I believe it will be and [Murphy] assured me it would receive that treatment.”
City Council must decide who votes for or against a casino in Boston. It could be up to the entire city or just the immediately affected neighborhood.
Before licensing any casino, the law requires a favorable vote from “host community” where it will be built.
Because of Boston’s large size, the council can choose to hold a vote for residents of the ward in which the casino will be located, or hold a citywide referendum, according to state law.
After Gov. Deval Patrick signed the expanded gaming bill last November, there has been talk of building a casino in Suffolk Downs, which Councilor Salvatore LaMattina, of East Boston, said he supported.
O’Malley said he supports holding a citywide referendum.
“I think clearly a casino at Suffolk Downs would affect East Boston much more than other neighborhoods,” O’Malley said. “However, it’s naïve to suggest that this won’t affect the entire city. It will.”
A rising contender for another Bay State casino is Foxborough.
Murphy said he could see both sides of the voting argument.
“A casino in Foxborough will impact me in Hyde Park maybe more than a casino in East Boston,” he said in an interview with The DFP, “because I’m closer to the site in Foxborough than I am to the site in East Boston.”
Murphy said if everyone’s money is going into gaming, then everyone should have a say, even though the impacts could disproportionately affect residents of one neighborhood.
“That’s the question, or one of the questions, that needs to be vetted in this,” he said.
Murphy also said he supports a casino in Boston over Foxborough.
“It’s of no value to me to see Foxborough get a casino and our people not be part of that,” he said. “I think we should have one in Boston.”
Murphy said that having been on the council now for sixteen years and president for two years, he knows what the unemployment rate is among Boston residents as well as minorities.
“Those are our people in our neighborhoods,” he said.
The new responsibility of the Economic Development & Planning Committee emerges amidst a transition throughout Massachusetts to prepare for the three possible casinos and one slots parlor that the expanded gaming act allows.
Patrick appointed Stephen Crosby, a dean at the University of Massachusetts-Boston, to be chair of the Massachusetts Gaming Commission required by the new law.
The five-member commission will be responsible for overseeing the state’s gaming activities, including reviewing applications for gaming licenses in the three regions that are allowed one casino each.
“By far, our highest priority is to implement this new legislation . . . in a way that is widely believed to be free of corruption and done on a transparent and fair and equitable basis,” Crosby said.
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