A new report detailing the impact out-of-state casinos would have on southeastern Connecticut's two gaming destinations will be released today, likely stoking calls for passage of a bill that would authorize the Mashantucket Pequot and Mohegan tribes to operate up to three small- to medium-size casinos near the state's borders.

The report's author, Clyde Barrow, a professor of public policy who's been studying casino gaming in the Northeast since 1995, will discuss his findings at a Hartford press conference. 

Barrow last year joined the faculty at the University of Texas-Rio Grande Valley, where he is chairman of the political science department. For 22 years before that, he served as director of the Center for Policy Analysis at UMass Dartmouth. In 2004, he launched the Northeastern Gaming Research Project, which has provided independent research on the economic, fiscal and social impacts of gaming in the New England and Mid-Atlantic regions. He's also a partner and general manager of Pyramid Associates LLC, a Massachusetts company that specializes in economic and fiscal analysis.

The Mashantuckets and the Mohegans, owners of Foxwoods Resort Casino and Mohegan Sun, respectively, hired Pyramid to conduct a "revenue displacement analysis" of the impact four proposed casinos in Massachusetts and New York would have on their properties — and, by extention, on the state of Connecticut, which pockets 25 percent of the casinos' slot-machine winnings.

Barrow offered some preliminary findings of his latest research during a public hearing held last month by the General Assembly's Public Safety and Security Committee, the panel that drafted the bill that would authorize the casino-owning tribes to operate commercial casinos. Barrow described an emerging "casino arms race" that promises to take a severe toll on Connecticut if the state fails to act.

"To understand what may happen to Connecticut's two casinos over the next five years, it is instructive to examine what just happened over the last five years," he began.

Casino gaming in the Northeast largely recovered from the Great Recession between 2009 and 2014, with gross gaming revenue in the region increasing by $2.5 billion, Barrow said. But it was not a case of all boats being lifted by a rising tide. States that expanded casino gaming or introduced it for the first time — states like Maine, Maryland, New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania — picked up market share, primarily at the expense of New Jersey, where four Atlantic City casinos closed in 2014, and Connecticut.

Total revenues (gaming and nongaming) at the Connecticut casinos declined by $1.2 billion, or 39 percent, over the last eight years, Barrow reported. More than 8,500 casino jobs were lost in the same period.

"The process will be repeated again over the next five years, and at the same level of magnitude, with the potential additional loss of more than 9,300 jobs and $354 million in wages statewide, if nothing is done to stem the flow of gaming revenue and jobs to the four new resort casinos that will open in Massachusetts and New York beginning in early 2017," Barrow testified.

The proposed casinos have been authorized for Springfield and Everett, Mass., and Schenectady and Thompson, N.Y.

Barrow will be joined at the press conference by Rodney Butler, the Mashantucket chairman, and Kevin Brown, the Mohegan chairman.

The bill, approved 15-8 by the public safety committee, awaits further consideration by the legislature.

b.hallenbeck@theday.com

Twitter: @bjhallenbeck