Junto Boys

BILOXI - NOW WHAT?

A few months ago I prepared a report on Mississippi's economy and economic outlook for a Jackson-based law firm. It was clear that the state was gambling on the gulf coast casino industry to sustain and boost the state's economy. Other than a new auto plant outside Jackson, there was no viable economic engine anywhere else in the state. Now the entire gambling industry just got wiped off the map, stripping the nation's poorest state of some $189 million in annual tax revenues and hanging a huge question mark over its economic future.

Gov. Barbour (R), is talking up rebuilding the industry and bringing the casinos onshore, notwithstanding campaign promises not to expand the gambling industry in the state. How unfortunate that he has little other choice.

"When he was running for governor in 2003, he sat in my office twice and told me he would not expand the gambling industry," said Donald E. Wildmon, president of the American Family Association, a conservative social policy organization based in Tupelo. "His constituency was the money people and the moral people, but he's chosen to split his constituency and side with the money people. Well, they may have the money, but we have the people, we have the votes, and he's going to pay."

Mr. Barbour, a Republican who was once the national party chairman, said his position was entirely consistent with what he said during his campaign, since all he had promised was to stop the spread of gambling to new Mississippi counties.

But Mr. Perkins said: "Well, it all depends on what you mean by expand. We certainly understood him to mean that the way the casinos were was the way they would remain. What he's talking about here sure sounds like expansion to us."

When casinos were first legalized in Mississippi, gambling was limited to a few boats that would pick up customers and ferry them offshore to gamble. Then, legislators decided to allow the casinos to operate even if they were permanently moored to the shore, as long as they remained on the water.

And last year, the legislature voted to allow the casinos to sink pilings into the sea floor, to more safely secure the structures. But before such construction could be undertaken, Katrina came along and destroyed most of the coast's gambling boats.
Under Mr. Barbour's proposal, operators could build casinos as much as 1,500 feet inland, as long as they also had some sort of structure right on the beach like a hotel that linked the casino to the water.

Religious leaders, however, said the proposal could eventually lead to casinos overrunning the state until there were slot machines in almost every gas station and saloon, as there are in neighboring Louisiana.

"We keep taking little baby steps toward what we fear is a total takeover of the state by the gambling-political complex," Mr. Perkins said.

I see a consulting opportunity here for Swish.

Aside: Tom, your posting of Cindy Sheehan alongside Lucy was genius.