Writing over at Commonwealth Beacon, Celeste Ribeiro Hewitt who chaired No Eastie Casino, the citizen-led ballot question committee that led the opposition to the referendum on a casino at Suffolk Downs in 2013:
“TO PUT IT in fitting terms, the Legislature’s handling of a potential expansion of gambling in Massachusetts has a less-than-subtle “tell” that signals how they prefer to govern in general: quietly, behind closed doors, and with as little public engagement as possible.
Arguably, no one is more tired of talking about expansion of gaming in Massachusetts than I am. As the co-chair of the group that blocked a Suffolk Downs casino bid in 2013, a proponent of the failed 2014 statewide repeal initiative aimed at ousting gaming altogether, and the chair of the ballot question opposition that blocked an international dark-money-financed bid to expand gaming licensure in Massachusetts in 2016, I was pretty sure that nothing had been left unsaid.
Unfortunately, the Massachusetts House has us back at it as they attempt to override their own carefully crafted casino legislation through a barely public, backroom maneuver.
As a House-Senate conference committee negotiates differences in their respective versions of a sweeping economic development bill, one of the biggest, most tangible stumbling blocks appears to be a provision in the House version that would allow so-called historical horse racing machines at former race tracks – the Suffolk Downs horse track, which straddles the Boston-Revere border, and the former dog racing track in Raynham.”
Read the whole article.
