Tag: Middleborough

Peter Kenney of Cape Cod Today reports tonight that the U.S. attorney’s office is very, very interested in possible ties between imprisoned former superlobbyist Jack Abramoff and the leadership of the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe, which seeks to build a casino in Middleborough. Kenney writes:

The letter from the U.S. Attorney’s office is eight pages long and lists specific documents to be delivered as well as specific areas of inquiry. One such area of inquiry, according to a source within the tribe, is correspondence to, from or about Jack Abramoff. Abramoff, who was convicted of defrauding clients of his Washington lobbying firm, is now serving a federal prison sentence. He has been linked to the lobbying efforts mounted by the Mashpee to gain federal recognition. Specifically, while he was employed by the Washington law firm Greenberg Traurig, two of his protégés — Kevin Ring and Michael Smith — worked directly with the tribe in their lobbying efforts before Congress and the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs.

The Abramoff connection has not struck me as particularly strong, but it’s interesting to see that federal authorities are trying to get to the bottom of it. There’s much that we don’t know.

Abramoff illustration (cc) by swaters. Some rights reserved.

My standard disclosure.

The mess in Middleborough keeps spreading, and, as always, you just can’t make this stuff up. We begin this morning at Cape Cod Today, which flogs a story in the New York Times (CCT links to a Times sister paper, the International Herald Tribune), and observes that the land purchased by the Mashpee Wampanoags on which they plan to build a casino is near a contaminated toxic-waste site. The story is preceded by a CCT “Editor’s Note” that says:

This grim discovery of two Super Fund sites in Middleborough which is the town chosen for the Mashpee Wampanoag casino by their South African investors and former tribal leader Glenn Marshall, immediately raises the specter of past injuries to the tribe by others. Lord Jeffrey Amherst is remembered as the European who wiped out tribes by encouraging his soldiers to distribute blankets contaminated with Smallpox to Native Americans in 1763.

The toxic-waste sites, linked to an improbably high rate of Lou Gehrig’s disease (see this New Bedford Standard-Times story by Phil Devitt), are near Everett Square, a densely settled neighborhood in the downtown. The proposed casino site is out in the sticks, several miles away. Though the New York Times story, by Michele Morgan Bolton, juxtaposes the tale of the Superfund sites with the casino in ways that are at times confusing, she does not allege a direct link between the two. Still, as CCT points out, this is pretty interesting.*

Elsewhere at Cape Cod Today, the indefatigable Peter Kenney tells the exceedingly weird story of Desiré Hendricks Moreno, secretary of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribal Council and sister of Shawn Hendricks, who took over as chairman of the council following the resignation of disgraced tribal leader Glenn Marshall. According to Kenney:

Reliable sources say that Desire Hendricks Moreno provided sanctuary for her cousin, Sharon Fitzpatrick, after Fitzpatrick’s husband was stabbed to death in Boston. Fitzpatrick has been charged with the murder and is free on $250,000 cash bail. According to one source in Mashpee, “Everyone in town knew she was at her cousin’s house over the weekend. And she was bragging about it afterwards.”

Kenney appears to be out there on the edge here, but his previous reporting on this story has not been successfully challenged. As Kenney also notes, the tribal council’s financial affairs are already being investigated by various government agencies, although it appears that Marshall, rather than Hendricks and Moreno, is the target of those investigations.

Meanwhile, the man who has most publicly associated himself with the mess that Middleborough stumbled into, Selectman Adam Bond, is trying to get himself hired as the $130,000-a-year town manager, even though he doesn’t meet even the minimal requirements that have been posted for the position.

The Boston Globe’s Christine Wallgren reports that Bond, who lacks a master’s degree in public administration, one of the prerequisites, thinks his law degree ought to suffice. How badly does Bond want the job? He tells Wallgren: “Why don’t they just offer me less money for the job, and tell me I have to go back to school to get a master’s in public administration?” I guess practicing law isn’t as lucrative as it used to be. Maybe that explains why he’s never bothered to do anything with his Web site.

By the way, one of Bond’s main backers, Tony Lawrence, is associated with Casino-friend.com, whose editor and publisher, Hal Brown, has compared casino opponents to the Ku Klux Klan.

In the Brockton Enterprise, Alice Elwell writes that Middleborough officials were silenced at a recent meeting of representatives from nearby communities. The reason given was the lack of consideration Middleborough reportedly showed those communities in approving a casino deal with the tribe last summer.

And, finally, the Cape Cod Times fronts a long report by Stephanie Vosk and George Brennan on Sol Kerzner and Len Wolman, the South African investors behind the Mashpee Wampanoags.

Vosk and Brennan write: “Most members of the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe can only wonder how much of their sovereignty has been signed away to help Kerzner and Wolman continue their dominance of New England’s gambling industry.”

*Update: I have revised this item to reflect changes in Cape Cod Today’s presentation of the New York Times story.

Disclosure #1: Cape Cod Today has begun serializing my book, “Little People,” today. I am not getting paid.

Disclosure #2: Just click here.

I’d like to ease off on posting about casino gambling, but the media won’t let me. Today, the Boston Globe’s Andrea Estes manages to make two mistakes in one sentence in reporting on Gov. Deval Patrick’s plan to require binding referendums in communities before a casino can be built.

Estes writes: “Middleborough voters have already voted in favor of a Mashpee Wampanoag casino for their town in July.”

No, and no.

First, there has never been a referendum in Middleborough on casino gambling. On July 28, a massive town meeting was called to consider the Mashpee Wampanoag proposal. More than 3,700 residents took part in what has been described as the largest town meeting in state history.

Yet that number is paltry compared to what would be expected in a townwide referendum, which is what Patrick wants. There are 14,652 registered voters in Middleborough. If turnout were just 50 percent — and I wouldn’t be surprised if it were much higher than that to vote on a casino proposal — then more than 7,000 voters would show up at the polls, approximately double the number who voted at town meeting.

It would also be fair to infer from Estes’ sentence that Middleborough wouldn’t even have to have a referendum, as it has already taken care of business. Wrong.

Second, the July 28 town meeting voted only to approve a deal the selectmen had negotiated with the tribe over amenities that would come to the town if a casino were built. In a separate, nonbinding question on whether people even want a casino in Middleborough, the answer was what Estes’ Globe colleague Sean Murphy, writing in CommonWealth Magazine, has reported was “overwhelming against a casino.”

Can we please start getting a few of these basic details right?

Friday morning update: There’s a trackback in a sidebar on page B8 this morning. Christine Wellgren, who covers Middleborough for the Globe and who does understand what happened on July 28, mentions the second town-meeting vote. I’m pretty sure this is the first time the Globe has mentioned the second vote since a Web update filed by Wellgren and another reporter shortly after the town meeting. By the next day, the second vote had somehow disappeared.

My standard disclosure.

Cape Cod Today reporter/blogger Peter Kenney writes (link fixed) that a dissident faction of the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe is preparing to renew a 30-year-old lawsuit against the town of Mashpee.

The suit, which is said to challenge “the validity of virtually every title to property in Mashpee,” was to have been laid to rest under the terms of an agreement reached by town officials with Glenn Marshall, the disgraced former leader of the tribal council.

Could this have an effect on the proposed Middleborough casino? It’s hard to say. But the Marshall-Mashpee agreement would have prevented the Wampanoags from building a casino in Mashpee. If the agreement is void, then a Mashpee casino would be on the table again.

My standard disclosure.

If nothing else, today’s Boston Globe poll on casino gambling shows that though there may be support for the idea of casino gambling, it’s going to be rough sledding for any particular casino proposal.

Overall, 53 percent of those surveyed say they favor Gov. Deval Patrick’s plan to build three casinos in Massachusetts. Dig deeper, though, and you can see that they really don’t.

The story, by Andrea Estes, gets at this dynamic here:

The poll raises the prospect of a “not in my backyard” backlash, one in which residents favor casinos but fear the traffic and crime problems associated with large-scale resort-casino developments. Fifty-four percent of those surveyed who live in metropolitan Boston said they think casinos should be located in rural areas, while 36 percent of those living in Western Massachusetts said they believe casinos should be in cities.

“I think if it’s in your backyard, you’re not going to want it,” said Ron Hull of East Boston, a teacher. “I’ve read that crime does go up in areas with casinos, and there is the traffic I’m worried about, too.”

When you look at the actual results (PDF), the numbers are even more striking. For instance, respondents were asked, “If Massachusetts were to permit casinos to open, would you want them to be in urban or rural areas?” Check this out:

• Those who live inside Route 128 favor rural areas over urban areas, 54 percent to 18 percent.
• Those who live between 128 and 495 favor rural areas over urban areas, 40 percent to 23 percent.
• Those who live in Central Massachusetts favor rural areas over urban areas, 45 percent to 26 percent.
• Those who live in Western Massachusetts favor urban areas over rural areas, 36 percent to 27 percent.
• Those who live in “Southern” (which I take to mean Southeastern) Massachusetts, Cape Cod and the Islands favor rural areas over urban areas, 44 percent to 24 percent.

So there you have it. In every part of the state, overwhelming majorities do not want a casino built near them.

My other favorite question: “If you had a child, would you want your son or daughter to work in a casino?” The answer: 46 percent “no,” 33 percent “yes.” This is, of course, another form of NIMBYism, and a particular pernicious one. Why is it all right for someone else’s kid to work at a casino but not your own?

In other casino-related news, efforts to recall three of Middleborough’s five selectmen fell short yesterday. (The New Bedford Standard-Times covers the story here; the Brockton Enterprise here.)

To the extent that casino opponents allowed the recall election to be portrayed as a referendum on the proposed casino in that town, this is an unfortunate development. But I suspect this will prove to be no more than a minor setback in the campaign to keep Middleborough casino-free.

My standard disclosure.

Could the Massachusetts House be losing its backbone? Casey Ross reports in the Boston Herald today that, in an informal survey of 111 House members, 65, or 58 percent, say they either support Gov. Deval Patrick’s proposal to build three casinos in Massachusetts or they’re undecided.

Coupled with this Matt Viser story in the Boston Globe, which says that Patrick is now leaning against building casinos in cities (including Boston and New Bedford), it now looks as though the proposed Middleborough casino may not be quite dead yet.

But wait. This Saturday, Middleborough voters will go to the polls to decide whether three of the five selectmen should be recalled. Brockton Enterprise reporter Alice Elwell has the details, as does Steve Decosta of the New Bedford Standard-Times.

For those of you just tuning in, here’s some more of the back story: All five selectmen support the casino, but two of them were elected or re-elected too recently to be subject to recall. One of those two, Adam Bond, has been the town’s main pro-casino cheerleader. There is a very good possibility that, after Saturday’s vote, three of the five selectmen will be anti-casino.

But will they be able to say so? Take a look at Section 22, Parts B and C, of the agreement (PDF) signed by the selectmen on July 28:

B. The Town will support the Project and agrees to actively work with and assist the Tribe and its contractors and agents to obtain any and all approvals, legislation, liquor licensing or other enactments required for the Project from governmental entities and officials of the United States, the Commonwealth and the Town.

C. The Town will reasonably assist the Tribe in responding to negative comments about the Project, reiterating the Town’s support and the basis therefor.

Part C is a doozy. It says, in effect, that town officials are prohibited from speaking out against the casino, and that if they do, they could be subject to legal action. I am reliably told that the anti-casino candidates for selectmen are puzzling over how much freedom of speech they’ll have if they win election on Saturday.

Meanwhile, I would think that no reporter should quote a Middleborough town official saying anything about the casino plan without noting that said official is legally obligated to say only positive things.

On another front, I join Jon Keller and David Kravitz in praising this Weekly Dig analysis by Julia Reischel and Paul McMorrow, which shows that Patrick’s proposal is pretty much a direct lift from a dubious study conducted by Clyde Barrow of UMass Dartmouth. If you can count cars in the parking lot, you, too, can become a casino expert.

Finally, here is a three-part series on gambling addiction published in April 2006 by the CNHI News Service. CNHI’s Massachusetts papers include the Lawrence Eagle-Tribune, the Newburyport Daily News, the Salem News and the Gloucester Times — all of them right in the path of a possible casino, given Patrick’s desire to build one somewhere north of Boston.

My standard disclosure.

Boston Globe reporter Sean Murphy has a 7,000-word retrospective on the lessons of the proposed Middleborough casino in the forthcoming issue of CommonWealth Magazine.

The whole thing is worth reading, but to me, the best part comes near the end. Here is Murphy’s description of the July 28 town meeting at which an agreement negotiated by the selectmen with the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe was put to a vote:

Moderator James Thomas kept the meeting under a tight rein. When the votes were counted, he announced that the casino agreement had passed, 2,387 to 1,335. A cheer went up. But there was a second item on the agenda, a nonbinding question to town residents. It asked a more basic question: Do you want a casino in Middleborough?

Thomas asked for a show of hands. Remarkably, the vote was overwhelming against a casino. Some chalked it up to proponents having left the football field after the binding vote on the selectmen’s casino deal was taken. What did they care once that deal had been validated? But others saw it as evidence that Middleborough residents really didn’t want a casino at all, but voted for the selectmen’s deal because, once the tribe and its bigfoot partners had scooped up the land, they felt painted into a corner.

Murphy closes with an anecdote about Ted Eayrs, a town assessor in Middleborough, who says he voted in favor of the agreement, but then turned around and voted “no” on the nonbinding question because, all things considered, he’d rather not see a casino come to town at all.

Indeed. Eayrs told me the same thing several months ago, saying he hoped the state would step in and kill the casino.

The second vote matters. I’m glad Murphy knows it, but I’d be even more glad if his newspaper would acknowledge it, too.

Disclosure #1: I write the “Mass.Media” feature for CommonWealth.

Disclosure #2: Just click here.

If you haven’t seen it, I want to call your attention to a terrific story on the front page of today’s Boston Globe about the effects of casino gambling. According to reporter Stephen Smith, the rate of gambling addiction is twice as high as it would otherwise be among people who live within 50 miles of a casino. Smith writes:

Psychiatrists and compulsive behavior specialists have shown that gambling can turn addictive in much the same way that alcohol or illicit drugs do, through a process in which the brain causes the dependence and then is damaged by it. Gamblers can be treated — with counseling, medication, and 12-step programs — but success is far from guaranteed. A year after entering treatment, studies suggest, about half of gamblers return to the slots and gaming tables.

How many times have you heard casino proponents say that people are going to gamble anyway, and that Massachusetts might as well benefit from the tax revenue that’s now going to Connecticut? In case there was any doubt, now we know: That’s less than a half-truth.

And look at where our population centers are. If Gov. Deval Patrick’s plan for casinos in Western Massachusetts, Southeastern Massachusetts and north of Boston comes to pass, then at least two-thirds of state residents — maybe more — will be within 50 miles of a casino.

Over at Blue Mass. Group, Charley Blandy links to a Boston Business Journal editorial that’s dripping with disdain for Patrick’s view that building casinos equals economic development. My favorite line: “We now have a governor who defends a major policy initiative on the basis that it won’t be ‘the end of civilization.’ What an endorsement for setting the stage for ruining more lives to gambling.”

My standard disclosure.

What was Gov. Deval Patrick doing during all those months when he was trying to make up his mind about casino gambling?

Well, here’s one thing he wasn’t doing: He wasn’t consulting with outside experts, even though his own internal task force had urged him to do just that. Here’s a key paragraph from Ken Maguire’s Associated Press report:

The memo [from the task force] with the disclaimer about estimates states: “Realistic employment and revenue projections would be particularly important if the commonwealth wished to enter into any agreement with a federally recognized Native American tribe or a private developer to expand gaming in the state. To do otherwise would be to risk entering negotiations over license fees, tax rates, etc. on an uneven information playing field.”

(Note: You won’t see Maguire’s byline, but I found it elsewhere.)

Maguire also quotes Patrick spokeswoman Cyndi Roy as saying that Patrick’s economic team conducted its own review, and that no outside experts were consulted.

Pretty amazing, no?

Update: Then again, as Jay Fitzgerald reports in today’s Boston Herald, who needs to talk with experts when you can schmooze with Donald Trump’s peeps?

My standard disclosure.