"I have friends with whom I've shared the same Daily Racing Form at the Rialto in downtown Portland, the same video poker terminals at the Buffalo Gap on Southwest Macadam and the same private poker table at a certain Southeast Portland home who are now dancing on the ruins of the proposed Wood Village casino. They were shocked -- shocked! -- that the backers of Measures 82 and 83 were trying to bring casino gambling to the Portland area.
But the battle over these measures, which their sponsors abandoned two weeks ago, wasn't about bringing gambling to Portland. We already have plenty of gaming venues in the tri-county area that are legal and, for the most part, pretty seedy. Just go to PortlandBarFly.com (barflymag.com) for a list of state-contracted video poker establishments that would cost state legislators their jobs if they tried to conduct an on-site audit there.
No, the battle over the casino ballot measures was about protecting the balance of monopoly market shares for tribal casinos and the state's video poker industry, which subsidizes bars, restaurants and even strip joints. As happens in campaigns of this kind, facts were shuffled and discarded, but deserve a second look. Let the record show that the Wood Village casino would have generated more revenue for our schools than existing tribal gaming pacts, based on the official estimate of financial impact in the Oregon Voters' Pamphlet. And, if you can trust the Oregon AFL-CIO on this subject, this same casino would have produced more family-wage jobs than our existing gambling establishments."
Get the Story:
Tim Nesbitt:
Measures 82 and 83: Casino demise leaves money, jobs on the table
(The Oregonian 10/30)
Also Today:
Oregon casino proposal meets familiar foe, the Grand Ronde, and suffers familiar setback
(The Oregonian 10/27)
Related Stories
Coquille Tribe also against non-Indian
casino project in Oregon (10/23)
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