Bridgeport, Connecticut. Image courtesy of Google Maps.
A daylong discussion of proposed gaming legislation rekindled a regional rift Tuesday, at times pitting southeastern Connecticut lawmakers against their counterparts from the Bridgeport area.
A recurring – and by now familiar – theme was whether the Mashantucket Pequot and Mohegan tribes have the exclusive right to operate new casinos in the state and whether their existing tribal casinos should be granted the exclusive right to roll out sports betting in Connecticut.
One of the bills up for debate before the legislature’s Public Safety and Security Committee would facilitate the tribes’ joint development of a casino in East Windsor, a project authorized by a law enacted in 2017. The bill, championed by state Sen. Cathy Osten, D-Sprague, and the rest of the southeastern Connecticut delegation, would free the tribes of the requirement that they secure federal approval of their amended gaming agreements with the state before building what would be Connecticut’s third casino and first on nontribal land.
“The only thing holding us up is the Department of the Interior’s refusal to follow the law and publish the amendments to our government-to-government agreements in the Federal Register,” Rodney Butler, the Mashantucket chairman, told committee members.
Butler alluded to what he called “shenanigans” that allegedly have played a part in Interior’s inaction.
“Just a few days ago,” he said, “we learned that a grand jury has been convened to determine if anything criminal took place resulting from former [Interior] Secretary [Ryan] Zinke’s handling of our issue, and while we are anxious to see the outcome of the various investigations, we don’t need to wait for the outcome at the state level.”
The East Windsor casino would protect the tribes’ southeastern Connecticut casinos – Foxwoods Resort Casino and Mohegan Sun – from the competition posed by MGM Springfield, the nearly $1 billion resort casino that opened in August in western Massachusetts. MGM Resorts International, the Springfield casino’s operator, has proposed a Bridgeport casino and supports a competitive-bidding bill that would have to be passed to make it possible.
Uri Clinton, an MGM Resorts executive, reiterated “that MGM continues to believe that Bridgeport would be the best, and strongest, location in Connecticut for a commercial casino,” according to written testimony filed with the committee. “I know that many others, in the legislature, in Bridgeport, in the region and across the state share that view.”
Butler made it clear that neither tribe would participate in a competitive-bidding process. The tribes believe the mere passage of the competitive-bidding measure would breach the exclusivity provisions of their gaming agreements, which require them to share their slot-machine revenues with the state.
“But that doesn’t mean we don’t want to help with the economic situation in Bridgeport,” he said, without elaborating.
