How about instead of opening a new casino we get the state out of the gambling business entirely, by abolishing the lottery? It's sort of like the state entering into the business of selling cigarettes.

I've hardly been in a tavern in my life, but something tells me that the folks at the local taverns in my neighborhood are hardly "stupid and hopeless."

Most probably gamble for the same reasons I do. I purchase the occasional lottery ticket and consider the 2 or 3 days of daydreaming (rationally absurd but emotionally pleasurable) to be an ample payback for my buck. I suppose you'd call that stupid too? Seems like a good deal to me.

But as for the real question, whether casinos should be an urban development strategy or remain a rural one, I don't know. On balance I have to believe that a city has more options for economic development and that dispersing casinos to rural environments (ie. leaving it primarily a tribal economic activity) makes more sense.

As an aesthetic and spiritual matter, the gambling steals people's souls, but maybe the drive through the countryside to get there or get back knocks some countervailing sense into them? Heavy gambling in the city on the other hand just steals the soul...

Since everyone can gamble already at the venue of his or her choice, why not make public policy decisions based upon calculating what gambling model will generate the most revenue for state and local governments and choose that one?

The status quo appears to allow one tribe to dominate the Portland metro market (excluding video poker which is not going anywhere). Allowing all tribes to bid on the Portland market would presumably generate more money for Oregon's state and local governments.

I will defer to the sin police on whether all gambling should be abolished.

Great idea! Gambling is the fairest form of taxation, voluntary taxation. It would be a refreshing change from our current tax system that penalizes initiative and drive while pitting economic classes against each other. If you don’t want to contribute then you could just avoid the casino.

Site the new gambling hall where Memorial Coliseum sits, call it Memorial Coliseum Casino and watch that dead zone around the Rose Quarter come alive with restaurants and other vibrant businesses.

Why let the Indians get all the profits from this form of entertainment? Time for the bluenoses and moralists to get out of the way and recognize that people can decide for themselves what kind of entertainment they want.

My only other suggestion would be to enact a corresponding decrease in property tax revenue that currently goes to schools with what will be offset by money made from the casino.

Unlike Las Vegas where gambling addicts prostitute themselves for enough money to get a bus ride back home, they can go by streetcar!

I enjoy going to Las Vegas. I don’t want Las Vegas to come to the Portland area. Does anyone want SEX, DRINKING, and GAMBLING to be what people think of when they think of Oregon? Ok, I know we have like 100 strip clubs in Portland. But, how far are we willing to go?

How many people are financially ruined by gambling? How many families are destroyed by video poker? Just a thought, if gambling harms our fellow Oregonians, if a 12 step program had to be invented to help people who are addicted to gambling why would we promote gambling? How, in the long run, does putting casinos in urban areas help our children? A new casino may finance K-12 for a while. Who is going to pay the rehab bills? Who is going to pay for the bankruptcies?

Let’s think long term. Oregonians are inventive, artistic, creative, economically diligent, over-achievers… So, let’s use some tax dollars and invest in the brilliant thinkers of our great state. Let our neighbors, brothers, sisters… create new products that are needed around the world. The revenue from our investments can be used to finance our schools.

it is legal, will create many new jobs and generate substantial tax revenues. WHATS THE PROBLEM?

Rachel wrote: Oregonians are inventive, artistic, creative, economically diligent, over-achievers...

eh... rather than having the 3rd highest unemployment rate in the nation at 12%+, seems to me that if Oregonians were such inventive, artistic, creative, economically diligent, over-achievers we'd already be creating the products and services needed around the world.

What are we waiting for? And don't give us the tired old 'we're waiting for the schools to be fully funded'... Arizona, Idaho, and Utah all spend well less per pupil than Oregon yet their unemployment rates are ~8% or lower.

Thanks, Sal:

"The amount of money spent lobbying the legislature, governor, and local governments to build more casinos will be unlike anything we have ever seen in the state, and it will have a tremendously corrupting influence on our political process. "

Not only that, but I wish to add a cautionary tale, esp. in these economic times.

I once had a weekend retail job to supplement an on-call position during the week.

I met a woman in a similar situation who was doing temp jobs during the week and the retail job on the weekend in order to feed her kids. She had fallen on hard times, so she was getting help from all sorts of charities---one month's electric bill, food baskets, etc. even though she was working very hard.

There are more people like this now than many people realize. Don't kid yourself--if such people vote they will cast votes pollsters are not likely to expect. And don't even think of the "[Demographic group] doesn't matter because they don't vote" nonsense. That is stereotyping of the worst order! This woman's view of campaign finance reform?

"For every dollar contributed to a campaign, a dollar should be required to be contributed to charity--people who make campaign contributions have the money to contribute, so they should be contributing to a good cause".

Think about the Abramoff scandal--that involved lobbying over whether casinos had the right to open/do business.

Casinos off tribal lands are just asking for graft and corruption because of the money involved.

For the amount of money spent on such lobbying, surely there is a better purpose for those funds. And if the casino advocates don't think so, they won't be able to convince voters who think as they do just by spending money. And if a statewide candidate is seen as "in the pocket of casino advocates", nothing else will matter (party, ideology, etc.).

Site the new gambling hall where Memorial Coliseum sits, call it Memorial Coliseum Casino and watch that dead zone around the Rose Quarter come alive with restaurants and other vibrant businesses.

How many places has this happened where casinos have been built?

Well let’s see, a little town called Las Vegas comes to mind.

Honestly, this is the biggest cash cow just waiting to be milked Oregon has ever seen. Yes, you need to amend the state constitution, so do it. Amend it so only one state run casino can exist, in Portland, and you eliminate the threat of competition from other casinos.

Fer cryin’ out loud, we are number one in unemployment (during the summer when unemployment is normally low) and are watching Indian tribes and other nearby states taking this moneymaker away from us. Why? Because we Oregonians don’t want to sully ourselves with “gambling” money! Oh the shame of it all!

Heck, you could make it a riverboat casino that plies the waterways of the Willamette and Columbia rivers. All the more exotic and profitable.

Really folks, what Oregon lacks is a visionary who will pick up this solid gold football and run with it to the goalposts.

Guv K, Mayor Sham, Councilman Randy, this is your moment to make history!!

Buckman, "Yes, you need to amend the state constitution, so do it. Amend it so only one state run casino can exist, in Portland, and you eliminate the threat of competition from other casinos."

This state has a procedure for amending the constitution. It does not include blogging.

If that is what you think is important, talk to every candidate and every elected official you know. Make that your main issue.

You really think all employment problems in this state will be solved by a casino, with none of the corruption which sometimes follows that sort of money?

Forgive me for being a skeptic. My grandfather was in law enforcement during Prohibition, and a state AG in the 1930s.

Kari, you are right about hiring Harrah's.

I have no problem with anyone on BO saying "we should..." as long as they realize that alone doesn't solve anything.

I feel the same way about the anti-taxers (like the one on Oregonlive who said the tax increases were done by "Teddy and the boys") who think rhetoric alone solves anything. Comments about "bluenoses" are not likely to win votes--and votes are needed to amend the constitution.

Discussion is fine. But substituting casino income for property taxes? Of course property taxes are too high, and the whole tax system needs overhaul. However, I agree with Sal about the likely outcome.

A friend of my niece went into teaching and lives in Nevada (either Las Vegas or Reno, forget which). But she works at a Catholic school. Could it be that is better funded than public school?

We need serious debate on this. If you think Buckman is contributing serious debate, that's fine--this is your blog. But as often happens, I agree with Sal.

Las Vegas is among the worst cities in America in terms of crime, corruption, bankruptcies and foreclosures, and that is your recipe for success in Portland?

I’d love to see your sources for this. I Googled “Crime Stats for US Cities” and Vegas didn’t even make the list. In fact PDX is way ahead of Vegas in aggregate economic misery, unemployment, foreclosures, you name it. Yes, Vegas was the victim of a real estate boom but so was every other American city including Portland.

Seriously, we are talking about ONE casino in Portland. Not a series of hotels with monorails or pyramids or statues of liberty, nothing even close to what Las Vegas Blvd. offers. If the city fathers can’t manage that without Portland becoming the second coming of Sodom we might as well lock the doors.

And yes, I’ve been off the Strip. It is a typical urban American city with shops, banks, restaurants, libraries, schools, services, the whole nine yards. All functioning just as well if not better than they do in good old Stumptown.

Some times I just have to shake my head at those in my hometown. Is there some puritanical virus that infects Portlanders and keeps them from embracing any progressive idea they get within 10 feet of?

Buckman, I understand you believe that a casino (and that any constititutional amendment could be written to say only one casino) would be the answer to many problems.

But to say it is a "progressive" idea is another story.

http://www.clan.lib.nv.us/content.asp?id=560 In Nevada, the outlawing of all gambling in 1910 was one part of Progressive reform. A year earlier, in 1908, the Anti-Gambling League had expressed their objections to gambling in a petition to the Reno city council.

The term Progressive dates back roughly a century.

From Answers.com--Wisconsin was a leader in the Progressive movement "In the early 20th cent., reform sentiment blossomed in the Progressive movement, under the tutelage of the Republican leader, Robert M. La Follette. This pragmatic attempt to achieve good effective government for all and to limit the excessive power of the few resulted in a direct primary law (1903), in legislation to regulate railroads and industry, in pure food acts, in high civil service standards, and in efforts toward cooperative nonpartisan action to solve labor problems."

My point is this: if you believe all good Portlanders should support a casino, if you believe the other casinos like Spirit Mountain should not worry about the competition, by all means make that your big issue for the coming year. Volunteer on the petition drive.

But don't claim that all good progressives support all casinos without asking questions.

Imagine if that business didn't request a dime of taxpayer subsidy or special treatment to build and operate the facility.

No special treatment? Really? If they didn't need special treatment, then they could already be building the damn thing. In what world is a special-just-for-your-business Constitutional Amendment NOT considered "special treatment"?

When a crime is committed in Oregon certain data is kept on police reports. This information is used to help identify causal factors that might aid in fighting crime. This data is often used to determine drug or alcohol use by the suspect, if certain weapons were involved, or any number of other possible contributing factors.

I know of no agency currently capturing the amount of crime attributed to a suspect's gambling addiction. The overall cost to us all may be enormous and growing, but difficult to measure. The cost to us goes way past the dollars lost by the gambler, and gets into the area of our overall social decline. You can bet (sorry) that problem gambling also contributes to drug and alcohol use, domestic violence, and all other forms of miscreant behavior.

Increasing our reliance on gambling proceeds makes little economic sense in the long run, regardless of new jobs created. We are not a world destination like Las Vegas drawing in billions from all over the world. Vegas, by the way, does not depend on the local population to fund their casinos, but thrives on the losses of all others who visit. That's why they call "sin city" or "lost wages" Nevada.

Ever since some enterprising Neanderthal made book on which member of the hunting party wouldn’t make it back from that day’s encounter with a wooly mammoth, primates (in all their permutations) have gambled, and if Portland want to cash in on it, so be it.

Decent paying jobs, increased revenue, a fairly “green” industry (pun intended) -- what’s not to like?

And no doubt there’ll be top-shelf entertainment (“You know, Jose Feliciano, ya got no complaints.”). Should we get in line now for those Tony Orlando and Dawn tickets?

I remember buying a lottery ticket on my 18th birthday, not winning and thinking, "That was a perfectly good waste of a couple of dollars." I've never understood gambling and don't indulge in it myself. However, I don't care if other people do. Most people who gamble don't have a problem with it and budget for their losses accordingly. It's the people who are bad at it and keep doing it that become the problem. But in a state as constantly starved for revenue as this one, I don't see any reason to limit revenue streams to fund basic services, or anything that could create hundreds of jobs.

I agree Oregon should open state-owned casinos, rather than putting them in private hands. Rather than one casino, I'd rather see seven -- one for each state university. Put a casino in Portland for PSU, one in Salem for Western Oregon, one in Eugene for U of O, and so forth. Use 10% of the gambling revenues from each casino to pay for addiction treatment and recovery; the rest should pay for capital projects, academic endowments and scholarship funds at the affiliated university.

I don't believe that gambling revenues should fund state operations. We should never allow ourselves to become dependent on gambling. But if the money is used entirely for capital investments, we could ban gambling tomorrow, and the buildings and endowments created with gambling revenues would still be there.

Lets be clear, I have not seen any casino outside of Las Vegas drawing the quality of entertainment that a Mandalay Bay Casino in Las Vegas does. I have yet to see or hear of a boxing, MMA, or WWE event with a multi-million dollar take from tickets being held at a Seven Feathers type casino.

Seven Feathers and the like draw 3rd rate, washed up one-hit wonders from the 1970s through the 1990s. Many of whom those younger than 40 years old never knew existed, much less heard their one mediocre hit.

Entertainers aside, the biggest money maker there will be in a casino in Portland, OR will not be millionaires like Bill Gates putting $5 million down at a roulette table on a regular basis; the biggest draw will be the video poker machines taking the dollars that and gambling addicts of all backgrounds are feeding it.

If you think that video poker machines = Las Vegas, then go get your little slice of it @ the Cheerful Tortoise near the PSU campus because you will only get that on a larger scale with a casino in Portland, OR.

Personally, I think that it would be nice to live in a state where the government trusted adults to make decisions for themselves, rather making decisions for people in an attempt to protect someone from the effects of a potential bad decision. You can't stop addicts from their drug of choice, unless of course, they choose not to pursue it. Drunks are going to drink, druggies are going to use drugs, and gamblers are going to gamble. Most people don't have a problem, some do. But you shouldn't punish the rest of us who aren't addicts by removing our choice.

Sure, the government should be charitable (as a reflection of the charity of the people who make up said government) and it should help people in need. Gambling addiction? We have a program for that. Alcoholism? We have a program for that.

But by denying the choice, look at what you are saying to people here: you guys are, generally, people who trust a woman with the difficult and life changing choice to remove tissue from her body that has the potential to become another sentient human being, but at the same time you don't seem to trust people with the much easier choice of whether to gamble their money? It's a huge contradiction. I can't help but think that people trusted with life and death decisions should also be trusted with decisions of lesser magnitude.

So, I would be in favor of letting someone start a casino given the issues that effect others are worked out (noise, traffic, potential increased crime containment, etc). As for the state owning and running the casino I would say no. With any business there is a reward of profit and a risk of loss. The profit would be nice for the state coffers, but what if the casino posts a loss? Better to have that loss in private hands than to have to cover a business loss out of the state fund.

Plus, in my mind, the state can be a great help to someone in need (certainly not the only help, of course), but it shouldn't also be a contributor in someone's problem. Being permissive of an activity is extremely different than being an active participant.

This state is hopelessly addicted to the revenue created by alcohol, gambling and tobacco. And it doesn't care how many lives are ruined in the process.

Does anyone want SEX, DRINKING, and GAMBLING to be what people think of when they think of Oregon?

Uhhhh...I've got news for you Rachel. They already do.

"This state is hopelessly addicted to the revenue created by alcohol, gambling and tobacco. And it doesn't care how many lives are ruined in the process."

Thank you, Robert, a friend of mine grew up in a family touched by such problems. So this is not academic to me.

I "waste" $5/week on the state Lottery and Powerball. I win occasionally but for the most part am in the whole. Itis a guilty pleasue, but hey I'm not one to stop and buy a $4 foo foo coffee three times a day either.

That said, I'm right up there with Scott. If the state could gain a reasonable revenue stream from it then they should look for it.

As to Seven Feathers. Yes, the acts may be second/third tier, but the area has been on a steady growth curve since the casino went in. there is now a state-of-the-art truck stop and additional hotels. The area and residents are benefitting.

Worries about harming the political process are absurd in a state that already swaps legislative voted the governor wants for cushy state jobs once the legislator leaves office.

I know some of you think video poker and line games in bars are for the "stupid and hopeless," but has anyone thought of how this might affect the bottom line of those small businesses and the people who work for them? The lottery (and my tips from winners) have been way down where I work since the first of the year (due to the tough economy and smoking ban). I bet the ORA will fight this tooth and nail.

Go back to the tribes and see if we can get the baseball stadium deal again. If we weren't too stupid to take that, the Washington Nationals would be in Portland right now.

You get more money per play at a roulette table than you do on a video poker machine.

Video poker machines take coins, while you can bet your whole house, retirement, and both of your child's college savings on a spin at the roulette table.

I never said, "stupid and hopeless." I said, "gambling addicts of all backgrounds," because video poker machines are where you start to make a $1 when you only have 25 cents to gamble.

For me, unless a casino in Portland, OR can be used draw more than your gambling addicts and one hit wonders as the top line entertainment, the time is better spent driving to Canyonville, OR because they certainly do not need the competition in the heart of Portland, OR.

Well, building it in Wood Village (site of the old Greyhound Track) is only popular with Wood Village. The surrounding cities of Gresham, Fairview and Troutdale are adamantly opposed to having a casino built on that site. The traffic alone would be a nightmare (we have more businesses and homes now by far than when the dogtrack was open). Without the support of the surrounding cities, this idea is a non-starter. And the poll in the paper was, as all polls are, filled with loaded questions to produce the answers the pollsters wanted (yes on casino). Once the citizens of East County hear all the arguments, pro and con, this will be voted down again. But I hope it makes it onto the ballot, specifying the Wood Village site so we can finally officially vote it down and move one.

As for the idea of a public casino in general? I have doubts it will ever happen given how many objections the other side can/will raise.

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