Albany makes bad bets on casino gambling and a legislative pay raise: Stephen Kimatian



Suppose you had booked a berth on the maiden voyage of the Titanic and before departure you somehow foresaw the disastrous ending. Would you still board the ship? Surely not. Yet that is exactly what New York state is about to do in awarding sites for casino gambling.

Suppose you had booked a berth on the maiden voyage of the Titanic and before departure you somehow foresaw the disastrous ending. Would you still board the ship? Surely not. Yet that is exactly what New York state is about to do in awarding sites for casino gambling.

Casino gambling is a sinking ship. In New Jersey, casino revenue tanked 45 percent, or $2.3 billion, in the past seven years. Trump's Taj Mahal is the fourth Atlantic City casino to go under in the past year, resulting in the loss of thousands of jobs and potentially crippling the state's tourist industry. Connecticut's Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun have been foundering since 2011. Pennsylvania saw a decrease in casino revenue last year. Massachusetts, which is about to award casino licenses, is now questioning that bet and looking to dry dock the idea.

The bottom line is that casinos are not only a bad bet, they are a terrible bet. New York state already has several gambling venues which will inevitably be cannibalized by any new casinos. That means the so-called jackpot of jobs and revenue will never live up to the claims. It's only a result of a deceptively worded ballot referendum that was intentionally rigged to appear favorable to voters, plus the millions of campaign contribution dollars funneled by casino developers to the heads of our state Legislature, the governor and key committee chairmen that greased the path of the legislation to law.

The coup de grace will be delivered by the oncoming typhoon of Internet gambling. Online betting will shortly toss the whole industry into a maelstrom, just as the Internet did to music, television and retail. The Legislature and governor need to abandon this sinking ship before it takes thousands of citizens down with it.

Another item on Albany's agenda is the possibility of a legislative pay raise. Though legislators can vote themselves a raise, theoretically, they work for the taxpayers and we ought to be the ones to decide.

Given that virtually no one ever leaves office voluntarily and that there is a line waiting in the wings to step in and even pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for the opportunity, there seems to be no need to increase salary to drum up candidates to run.

On job performance, the one overriding requirement here is legislation that delivers a friendly business climate. On this score, it is a sorry story to say that New York ranks 49th out of 50 states, according to the 2104 report by the Tax Foundation. So we hit another brick wall justifying a raise.

But what about professional ethics? On that score, 32 members have been indicted or involved in scandals in the past seven years. The Speaker of the Assembly paid $103,000 of taxpayer money to hush up harassment allegations against a member and the speaker's close associates have been charged with crimes. Albany is immersed in a culture of corruption. So ethics is not a particularly strong suit.

Then, too, we need to keep in mind these are part-time jobs, paying a not-too-shabby base of $79,500 with an average of about $90,000 when you take into account the perks. For many with influential positions, the pay is $120,000 and more. And this does not take into account how legislators use their influence to make money for their law firms.

Still, we are a capitalistic system and cost efficiency of an operation is always a factor. Let's look at a benchmark. California has a state budget of $155 billion, has double the population and is three times the size of New York and needs only 120 legislative members compared with New York's budget of $109 billion and 213 members.

The fundamental question is: How many legislators does it take to do the job? Though numerically there are 150 Assembly members and 63 Senate members, the true dynamics are such that only the leaders of the Assembly, the Senate and the governor make decisions. No bill gets out of legislative committees without the Assembly and Senate leaders, which de facto means that four people control it all. The question becomes: Given the current rules of procedure, do we really need members in office if they have no power? Probably not.

Lastly, let's keep in mind that the average worker in the United States in the past 10 years has really had no increase in wages. So taking all into account, it is questionable on what basis a raise would be justified. In fact, after going over the merits, it really looks like we are overpaying for an inefficient, bloated, corrupt system and there really should be a decrease in salary and a refund to taxpayers. It does seem that Albany and the Titanic are connected -- that is, they arh disasters.

This is a reprint from syracuse.com. to view the original, click here.


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