Northern California Casino Opponents Say New UC Riverside Study on Indian
Casinos Misses Major Points
RICHMOND, Calif. and SAN PABLO, Calif., Jan. 11 /PRNewswire/ -- Opponents
of urban gambling proposals across Northern California joined together today
to raise concerns about a new report from UC Riverside that overstates the
benefits and understates the impacts of Indian casinos in California.
Gambling in California, already a larger industry than in Las Vegas, extracts
a large toll on California residents and the state's economy -- and as
gambling creeps into urbanized areas, the costs are expected to increase
dramatically.
The UC Riverside study, which was funded by Native American interests,
focuses on the "Sleepy Days" of tribal government growth from 1990-2000,
before Californians voted to approve tribal gaming initiatives. It fails to
examine the true impacts on communities -- especially those impacted by
reservation shopping and Las Vegas-backed investors in urban areas of the
state.
"We stand by the conclusion of our 2005 Casino Impact Study, which showed
that there would be significant negative health and social effects locally
from the expansion of Indian gaming into urban municipalities. The report
released today certainly does not refute these findings," said Dr. William
Walker, Director of Contra Costa Health Services. In August 2005, Contra Costa
County released the Casino San Pablo Public Health and EMS Impact Study*. The
Contra Costa County study calculated that the expansion of Casino San Pablo
would result in almost 30,000 Contra Costa residents becoming problem
gamblers, one additional traffic accident each day, three additional ambulance
transports from the casino to local hospitals and delayed ambulance response
and transport times due to increased traffic congestion.
In another study released in 2005 by University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Professor William Thompson* examining the impacts of urban casinos, such as
the one proposed in San Pablo or the one currently under consideration for
Richmond, California, the following findings were detailed:
-- Urban casinos draw 90% of their revenues from local communities
-- Urban casinos keep less than 60% of revenue in the local community
-- while sending 40% of revenue to out-of-state interests
-- For the San Pablo Casino project as originally outlined -- this
would have created an annual drain on the Bay Area economy of
$193 million annually
-- Urban casinos prey on the neighboring communities and cause
unprecedented social ills
-- California Casinos do not draw down on Las Vegas revenues --
Gambling in California has increased from $8.5 Billion in 1999 to
$10.5 Billion in 2004 while Las Vegas revenues have increased every
year since 1955 and since 2002 have gone to stratospheric heights
"The study released today may provide a baseline reference to which we can
compare the effects of gambling casinos in the future, but it ignores the
problems such as traffic, increases in crime, and family distress resulting
from casinos in rural areas, problems only exacerbated in urban areas," said
Margaret Gradie, President of the Coalition to Save Point Molate, a
Richmond-based group opposed to a local casino proposal. "For this reason, I
propose a moratorium on all new casino developments in California until the
state can conduct a comprehensive and unbiased study on the effects of future
casino development -especially casinos in urban areas."
The San Francisco Bay Area has recently emerged as a hotbed for urban
casino proposals. In the last year there have been five separate proposals by
Indian tribes, with the backing of well-funded developers, to build
Las-Vegas-style casinos in urban communities in the East Bay. Reservation
shopping in urban areas has been recognized as an increasing and troubling
trend and has spurred separate announcements and legislative initiatives by
Senators John McCain and Diane Feinstein, Congressmen Mike Rogers and Richard
Pombo to remedy it.
"In an urban community -- each dollar spent inside a casino is one that
isn't spent at local restaurants and shops," said Dean Marshall, Co-Chair of
the East Bay Citizens Against Urban Casinos, the group fighting the expansion
of Casino San Pablo. "We would welcome a REAL study on the impact of casinos
in California -- especially in this post-2000 climate, when casinos have
literally exploded across the landscape -- and this study just isn't it."
* To obtain a copy of these studies and others, please email
info@stopurbancasinos.org.
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SOURCE East Bay Coalition Against Urban Casinos
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CONTACT:
Conor Lee for East Bay Coalition Against
Urban Casinos, +1-510-271-0640, ext. 103, or cell,
+1-408-802-0208, or info@stopurbancasinos.org
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