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Monday night (tonight) NECN will broadcast a debate where Selectman Adam Bond and former Selectman Ted Eayrs will discuss the pros and cons of a casino in Middleboro.

This will actually be taped at 10:00 AM this morning, and will be broadcast around 8:00 PM tonight. I attended a meeting yesterday where a number of us played Devil's advocate to help Adam prepare for the show.

There's no point in theorizing what will happen - that's more under the control of the moderator than anyone else. However, one point did come out that I thought was interesting with regard to infrastructure improvements; that is, improvements to water supply and disposal, road improvements and so on. Some anti-casino foes have complained that the $160 million figure estimated to be the cost of such improvements is way too low; that it's as laughable as the original estimates for the Big Dig. I'm actually of the same opinion, but it doesn't matter: it isn't and won't be Middleboro's problem. The developers aren't offering Middleboro $160M to fix these things; they simply have promised to do the work, period. The $160M is just a figure Middleboro department heads came up with as their estimate of the value of those improvements. Middleboro isn't being given $160M to fix the infrastructure issues: those things simply will be fixed, and if it costs three times that, it's not our problem.

An issue more likely to be brought up is that an influx of Casino employees may choose to live in Middleboro and could dominate town politics. No doubt the same fears were raised by the influx of we Oak Pointers, and there has been talk of changing Middleboro's form of government to help prevent such a takeover. I personally think it's overblown: even if half the town were casino employees, why would you think voting would be adversely affected? These are still people: they want good roads, fair taxes, education for their children, good police and fire services and everything else the rest of us want. Employees aren't "owners", and with large corporations, many employees may actually dislike their employer and might vote against its interests. I think it's very unlikely that casino employees would be a massive pro-casino voting block.

There are two other issues that are legitimate concerns. The first is inflation: we're being offered $7M a year now, but what's that worth 10 years from now? In the original draft agreement, there was provision for CPI adjustment, but it was not phrased well, and needs to be adjusted in the final agreement so that inflation doesn't erode this away to be meaningless.

Next is the issue of fiscal responsibility. There's a real fear in some quarters that the Selectmen will "waste" this money; will fritter it away on unneeded administrative overhead and so on. I don't know how Adam might respond to that; he might simply say that the voters need to exercise the control that they often give to others through apathy. That's true, but I'm reminded that I have read that many lottery winners who win many millions of dollars often end up broke a few years later. Some people just can't handle money and will overspend no matter how much they started with. Should the fact that some people do this dissuade me from buying a lottery ticket now and then? I don't think so. Neither do I think Middleboro should pass up this opportunity over fears of fiscal mismanagement.

Middleboro faces an unpleasant future without this casino. There's a cartoon at http://www.mises.org/story/1966 that well illustrates their thinking: somewhere along the way from now to that bleak future, a "miracle" occurs and all will be well. I think this casino deal is that miracle. There's not likely to be another.

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