New York’s newest casinos are not doing as well as they had expected, so two of them have asked the state to provide them with financial concessions. Governor Andrew Cuomo nixed that idea last week.
The state of New York has many racetracks and tribal casinos and has had them for decades, but it wasn’t until 2015 that the state approved the construction of four resort-style casinos. Two of them, Rivers Casino & Resort and Del Lago Resort and Casino, opened last February. Tioga Downs opened in 1976, closed down in 1978, re-opened n 2006, and expanded to a full-scale casino operation last February. Resorts World Catskills opened less than two months ago.
It is Rivers and Del Lago that decided to make the appeal to Albany for a “bailout” of sorts, doing so last week in the final days of the New York legislature’s budget negotiations. According to a report in The Daily Gazette, Rivers had projected tax payments to the state to be in the $69 million to $86 million range for its first year, but only paid $45.45 million for the period from March 2017 to February 2018. Similarly, Del Lago projected $59 million to $76 million but paid only $42.92 million.
Tioga Downs fared about the same, as far as falling short of projections. Resorts World, though much larger than either Rivers or Del Lago, made about the same amount of money in its first five weeks, not a good sign.
Last week, Assemblyman Phil Steck (D-Colonie), who represents the district where Rivers is located, told The Daily Gazette what Rivers would like from the state. From the article:
• To take 10 percent of the tax money it pays to the state and spend it instead on marketing. The goal is to increase patronage, increase gambling and thereby increase its own revenue. (This ultimately would bring in more tax revenue, Steck said; in the meantime, there would be no reduction in host-community payments to the city, county, city school district or to surrounding counties.)
• An end to the requirement that it pay the state to run security checks on its prospective employees. (Steck said that the state hasn’t been collecting that and doesn’t require it of the nearest competing gambling facility, Saratoga Casino Hotel.)
• An end to payments Rivers is required to make to Saratoga Casino Hotel to make up for revenue shortfalls in Saratoga. (An official with Saratoga Casino Hotel said this is inaccurate, Rivers pays it nothing — it pays the horsemen’s association to compensate for reduced prize money at the Saratoga harness track.)
Governor Cuomo, who, unlike Steck, was a proponent of the casinos, said the government would not agree to the casinos’ requests. From a USA Today Network video:
The upstate gaming casinos are private concerns. They bid, they made an investment and some of them will say they’re not doing as well as they hoped or would have expected but they’re private concerns, and I don’t want to get into the business of bailing out private concerns.
We did casino gaming to create facilities, generate economic development to create jobs and it has done that. These facilities have done billions of dollars of construction and they employ thousands of people. So to the extent you have a casino saying ‘You know what … I’m not meeting my expectations, I should get help from the state,’ I’m not sympathetic to that.
As Cuomo said, New York’s casinos have succeeded in many areas, even if revenue isn’t what they had hoped. Using Rivers as an example, The Daily Gazette said that the casino revitalized a blighted area, employs 1,100 people, and has generated millions in tax revenue for the city and county.
