Experience Columbus exists to boost the city's prosperity by marketing it as an appealing, exciting place to visit and do business. It shouldn't sell that mission out to the company that wants to bring casino gambling, with all its baggage, to the Arena District.
Penn National Gaming, the company that would gain a casino monopoly in central Ohio if voters approve State Issue 3, is trying to win the endorsement of Experience Columbus, the city's convention bureau, by promising the agency it will make annual financial contributions and refrain from building a hotel and large-scale meeting spaces that would compete with existing Columbus businesses.
It's a bad bargain.
Most of the business and civic leaders Experience Columbus represents oppose Issue 3 for good reason: The temporary construction jobs and low-wage service positions it would bring aren't worth the increased crime, gambling addiction and corruption that typically accompany big-time casinos.
Gambling interests tend to contribute generously to the campaign funds of those lawmakers who support them and their interests. If casinos become established in Ohio, voters and taxpayers who want state law to protect them and their communities from its corrosive influence will find their influence dwarfed by the largess that will flow to legislators from these companies.
The power of the casino backers' purse is evident in the endorsement of Issue 3 by the Ohio Fraternal Order of Police. The state's law-enforcement officers surely know that casinos in other states come with a host of problems for police. Yet, they have lent their political weight to the casino scheme, because backers sweetened the proposal with language setting aside 2 percent of casino taxes for police training.
Nationwide, the parent company of the Arena District's primary developers, opposes the plan because of the negative impact casinos have on their neighborhoods. The Dispatch Printing Co., publisher of The Dispatch, is a 20 percent partner with Nationwide in the Arena District.
Far from stimulating economic development, casinos have a depressing effect, because casino gamblers lose the money that they otherwise would be spending at restaurants, concerts and movie theaters -- not to mention on cars, refrigerators and mortgage payments.
The United States International Gambling Report Series, a 3,000-page compilation of decades of academic research on gambling, concludes that casinos cost communities $3 in lost economic development, increased crime and social problems for every $1 they generate in benefits.
Nurturing the Arena District is one of Experience Columbus' priorities, and a casino would not serve the district or the city well. Experience Columbus should decline Penn National's deal and focus on the sort of sustainable, healthy development that has made the district a gem.
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