Editorial: Casino location all about the money

Thursday, July 5, 2007  

"Mashpee Wampanoag tribe Chairman Glenn Marshall and the Mohegan Sun casino investors are certainly exercising their inalienable right to place capital gain above all other values. Mr. Marshall said this week in a public radio interview that the auditing and business consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers is evaluating several possible casino locations, including Middleboro, New Bedford, and other municipalities within a 20-mile radius to see where a casino would generate the most money.

And that, folks, is what will determine where the casino goes, not some fiction about municipal payments or a welcoming board of selectmen.

Naturally, a huge rural setting in Middleboro, with room for a golf course or whatever else they want to build, seems likely to be the most profitable. But if a casino in New Bedford — or Marion or any other town, for that matter — would make more money, that is what Mr. Marshall (who is really doing the bidding of the developers) would want to do, and to hell with good land-use planning.

Mr. Marshall continues his spin-machine claim that Middleboro and New Bedford are equally in the running for a casino, even though the tribe has purchased and optioned a total of 325 acres in Middleboro. Technically, he is right. If the financial review were to favor New Bedford, the casino interests could drop Middleboro in a heartbeat and build houses on the land they bought.

Now Middleboro officials are raising their financial demands on the tribe, revealing why they threw themselves at the Wampanoags from the start: to get a piece of the pie. They are betting that the financial projections will favor the town so strongly that the casino developers will be forced to give in to their demands.

Again, it's all about the money."

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OUR VIEW: Casino location? Follow the money (South Coast Media Group 7/5)