Legislature's finance committee drafts another third-casino bill
Another bill that would establish a competitive-bidding process that could lead to a third Connecticut casino emerged Tuesday from the legislature’s Finance, Revenue and Bonding Committee.
Raised Bill 7319, the third casino-expansion proposal now being offered, is similar to House Bill 7239, which the Public Safety and Security Committee forwarded last month. Both measures call for the commissioners of the state departments of Consumer Protection and Economic and Community Development to issue a request for casino proposals and to select an entity to develop, manage and operate “a possible casino gaming facility in the state.”
Applicants could include individuals, business organizations and Indian tribes.
The other casino-expansion proposal, Senate Bill 957, also forwarded last month by the public safety committee, would grant the Mashantucket Pequot and Mohegan tribes the exclusive right to develop a casino in East Windsor.
Legislators were not immediately available to comment on the finance committee bill. A spokesman for MMCT Venture, the Mashantucket-Mohegan partnership pursuing the East Windsor casino, declined to comment.
The finance committee bill would require that bidders agree to invest at least $500 million in a proposed casino — substantially more than the $300 million minimum investment specified in the earlier competitive-bidding bill.
The Mashantucket and Mohegan tribes have characterized their proposed East Windsor casino as a small- to medium-size “satellite” facility that would cost up to $300 million to build. It would be designed to protect the tribes’ respective southeastern Connecticut casinos — Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun — against the competitive threat posed by MGM Springfield, the $950 million resort casino under construction in Massachusetts.
The finance committee bill calls for the operator of a third Connecticut casino to pay the state 35 percent of the facility’s revenues from both slot machines and all other games. The earlier competitive-bidding bill requires payments of 35 percent of slots revenue and 10 percent of other games’ revenue.
Both competitive-bidding bills call for an annual payment of $8 million to the municipality that hosts the proposed casino, about the same amount the tribes would guarantee to East Windsor.
Neither of the previous bills has seemed to gain much traction, largely because of uncertainty surrounding what impact they might have on the state’s existing revenue-sharing agreements with the tribes. The Mashantuckets and the Mohegans agreed in the 1990s to pay 25 percent of their casinos’ slots revenue to the state in exchange for the exclusive right to operate gaming facilities in Connecticut.
Whether that arrangement can be amended to legally accommodate a third, commercial casino on nontribal land is unclear. The tribes, seeking to allay doubts, have assured state officials they would keep paying the state 25 percent of their existing casinos’ slots revenue as well as 25 percent of the revenues from the proposed East Windsor casino’s slots and table games.
MGM Springfield is scheduled to open in September 2018.
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