East Boston rejected a casino at the ballot box once. Now a new gambling bill could become law without consulting the community.
Backers say it would save jobs and help safety-net hospitals. Critics say the machines are slots by another name and sidestep gaming regulation.
By hola | Published | No Comments
In 2013, East Boston voters defeated a $1 billion plan to build a casino at Suffolk Downs. Now, a new proposal would expand betting at the former thoroughbred racetrack or elsewhere in Suffolk County. There are no plans for a referendum this time, however, since the proposal currently under consideration would not be regulated by Massachusetts’ Expanded Gaming Act that governed the earlier fight.
This proposal, tucked inside a voluminous economic development bill, passed the Massachusetts House of Representatives in July and is currently under consideration by a legislative conference committee that could issue its report any day now. It differs from the 2013 casino proposal in several key ways. Rather than a casino or a racetrack, the proposed legislation would legalize historical horse racing (HHR) machines that allow bettors to wager on the outcome of past horse races.
The HHR proposal defines the machines as a form of pari-mutuel gambling, just like traditional horse racing, which is taxed differently and regulated less stringently than other forms of legalized gambling in Massachusetts. Supporters maintain HHR is an updated technology that should be regulated like horse races, not slot machines. But the effort to legally define HHR in a way that avoids Expanded Gaming Act regulation has casino owners crying foul and experts and gambling opponents calling for more stringent government oversight.
“There are real social costs of people who get addicted to gambling,” said Richard McGowan S.J., an associate professor at Boston College who studies gambling. “Most of us can gamble and know when to stop, but there are people who can’t. So, how do you protect those people?”
While they are built to display actual horse races, HHR machines mimic many characteristics of traditional slot machines. Both have flashing lights, interactive screens and celebratory sound effects, but they operate differently. At a casino, gamblers bet against the house while HHR machines allow gamblers to bet against each other. Pari-mutuel systems pool wagers together and distribute payments among the winning bettors.
Casino operators and gambling opponents, unlike in 2013, find themselves on the same side of the current debate, though for different reasons. Massachusetts casino operators, including Encore Boston Harbor in Everett, where a betting emporium was eventually built, say the HHR bill threatens their business. Gambling critics worry about how more gambling could adversely affect the lives of neighborhood residents.
Pedro Morales, an East Boston community activist and academic who was deeply involved in the fight against the casino in 2013, said he didn’t care what the bill’s backers call the machines. Speaking in Spanish, he said, gambling is gambling and brings myriad negative consequences, from gambling addiction to higher rates of foreclosures, crime and mental health problems.
“We’re against gambling — period. No matter what it’s derivative of or what adjectives you put on it to characterize it another way,” said Morales of the HHR machines.
He coordinated opposition to the casino from the religious community in 2013. That fight was governed by the Expanded Gaming Act’s regulatory framework, which had become law just two years earlier. Besides the economic impact studies, background checks and suitability evaluations, the law requires public consultations and a host community referendum, giving local residents the final decision. Since Suffolk Downs straddles East Boston and Revere, the casino plan needed a majority vote from both communities, but in East Boston, voters rejected the project on Nov. 5, 2013.
Celeste Ribeiro Hewitt, a Boston activist and entrepreneur, led the No Eastie Casino coalition over a decade ago. She still savors the memory of how residents “beat down” the casino industry’s well-financed operation with “a $50,000 modest budget and just shoe leather and grit by residents in the neighborhood of East Boston.”
“So, when we learned about the new HHR initiative, we were shocked,” Hewitt said. “Not only that this was a subversive measure again, evading the will of the people and any kind of outreach to residents and voters, but we were shocked that it was put forth by our own state representative.”
State Rep. Adrian Madaro, who introduced the legislation and represents East Boston, has defended the proposal as a job saver that will help the state reduce the shortfall facing its Health Safety Net, a program that pays hospitals that treat low-income, uninsured or underinsured residents. He filed it as an amendment to the economic development bill, which passed the House on July 8.
The Senate later passed a different version of the bill that omitted the HHR machine proposal. A final version is currently being negotiated by a six-person conference committee composed of three members from each chamber. Once they reach an agreement, the bill will return to the House and Senate for final approval anytime before the end of the legislative session on January 5. It would also need the support of Gov. Maura Healey, who has line-item veto power.
If the proposal passes, it’s unclear where the new HHR machines would be installed. As written, the House proposal would only benefit “racing licensees,” which it defines as businesses that already hold horse or greyhound racing licenses and conducted simulcast wagering in 2025. That narrows its beneficiaries to just two racetrack properties: Suffolk Downs and Raynham Park in southeastern Massachusetts.
Just one developer has plans for both: Richard Fields, a principal owner of Sterling Suffolk Racecourse, LLC. Fields was also a key player in the earlier gambling fight in East Boston when he sought to build a Mohegan Sun casino at Suffolk Downs. In the end, the state gambling commission awarded developer Steve Wynn the sought-after Boston-area casino license for what became the Encore Boston Harbor casino in Everett, as the Boston Globe reported in 2014.
In July of this year, when the Globe broke news of the HHR machine bill, the newspaper cited a report by the Spectrum Gaming Group laying out a $225 million construction plan for adding HHR machines at Suffolk Downs and Raynham Park with the two projects creating more than a thousand new jobs. But after those plans sparked outraged from Ribeiro Hewitt and other residents in the vicinity of Suffolk Downs, Madaro and the racetrack issued separate statements saying the company does not intend to add the HHR machines to its current East Boston location, where it operates a simulcast parlor.
Madaro, who declined Hola Cultura’s interview requests, sent us his public statement: “This amendment was not filed to expand gaming at Sterling Suffolk’s current location. It was filed with the intent of helping facilitate the company’s move out of Suffolk Downs, to preserve the existing jobs at the company, many of which are held by residents of my district, while also raising much-needed revenue for our safety net hospitals, including NeighborHealth in East Boston.”
Madaro’s office also referred us to a Letter to the Community published on the Suffolk Downs website that says legislation passed two years ago allows it to relocate its existing simulcast operation to anywhere within Suffolk County, and it’s evaluating alternative locations.
Through a spokesperson, Fields declined to comment on the legislation, but the community letter went on to say the HHR machine rollout would create new economic opportunities in the Raynham and Taunton region and would eventually generate more than $100 million in funds annually for the state’s safety net hospitals, which—according to a report by the Massachusetts Health & Hospital Association—are facing an estimated $340 million deficit in the fiscal year 2027.
However, questions have been raised about how much the gaming revenue could shore up the safety net’s finances. McGowan, the Boston College gambling expert, is among those skeptical of assertions that the machines would generate enough revenue to provide much financial support to the struggling hospitals.
“If you think this revenue is going to solve the hospital crisis in Massachusetts, no way,” McGowan said. “It might be helpful, but it is certainly not going to solve the problem.”
Policy experts are also concerned about the potential risks that slot-style machines could bring. Under the proposed legislation, HHR wagers would be regulated under the Massachusetts Gaming Commission’s framework for pari-mutuel betting, rather than the Expanded Gaming Act, which governs the state’s casino industry. This difference has gaming policy advocates questioning whether HHR machines will have to adhere to the same monitoring policies and consumer safeguards governing slot machine operations.
Cathy Judd-Stein, the former chair of the Massachusetts Gaming Commission, took issue with the lack of public consultation in a statement shared with Hola Cultura. “Without the benefit of public comment and thorough review,” she said, the proposal has the “potential to undermine what has made Massachusetts a national gaming model.”
Marlene Warner, the CEO of the Massachusetts Council on Gaming and Health, a nonprofit created to respond to gambling health concerns, wrote to the legislative conference committee negotiating a final economic development bill, urging lawmakers to reject the HHR amendment.
“Introducing slot-like machines into venues without responsible gaming infrastructure would increase risk while diluting the help available to the nearly 10% of Massachusetts residents already experiencing some form of gambling harm,” Warner’s letter states.
Warner said in an interview with Hola Cultura that she’s concerned that HHR machines could be used to create smaller, community-based gambling venues without the same oversight received by existing casinos. “There’s so much wrong with the idea of creating these community-based smaller slot parlors,” Warner elaborated.
Saying the HHR proposal was added to the economic development bill “in the 11th hour,” Warner also echoed Judd-Stein’s concerns about transparency and regulatory review.
While “not every piece of legislation gets public comment,” Warner said she would have liked to have seen “a more transparent, open process, where (the bill is) not just attached at the end.”
The state’s established casinos, meanwhile, argue that the machines are essentially slot machines and should be regulated like slot machines. If not, they say the HHR proposal, if made law, would unfairly encroach on their business while avoiding the licensing, tax and oversight costs of complying with the state’s gambling regulatory requirements.
For instance, according to the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe, which operates the First Light Casino in Taunton, next door to Raynham, the HHR machines threaten the tribe’s economic self-sufficiency—“our ability to provide essential services like housing, health care, education, elder care, public safety, and programs that preserve our language and culture.” It also maintains the proposal would violate the Tribal-State Compact, an agreement negotiated by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the tribe to govern tribal gaming. The tribe holds exclusive rights to casino betting in the state’s southeast region.
“This proposal is a complete violation of the Commonwealth’s Compact with our sovereign Tribal Nation,” Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe Chairman Brian Weeden said in a statement. “The state cannot simply abandon that commitment by calling slot machines ‘historical horse racing’ and placing them outside the gaming laws that govern everyone else.”
Weeden characterized the bill as an attack on the tribe’s sovereignty. To bring its message to lawmakers, the tribe is holding a rally at the State House tomorrow. According to the tribe’s website, state Sen. Lydia Edwards, who represents East Boston, will be there. Last week Edwards’ office confirmed that she asked the legislative conference committee to reject the proposal and leave HHR machines out of the final version of the economic development bill.
Hola Cultura contacted the Carney family, owners of the former greyhound track at Raynham Park, but did not receive a response. If we hear from them, we will update this story.
The debate over whether HHR is a form of pari-mutuel wagering isn’t just unfolding in Massachusetts. It has led to heated debates in other states too. In Louisiana, for example, last year the state’s Supreme Court ruled a 2021 state law that legalized HHR machines was unconstitutional, ruling that HHR is not a form of pari-mutuel gambling and would therefore require local voter approval.
Morales, meanwhile, the East Boston resident who worries about the fallout from more gambling in society, said he sees an age-old problem that only ends badly.
“It’s an extracting business. You have mining companies that extract minerals, oil or something. These extract resources, specifically money” from people in the community, he said. “So it starts with infatuation and ends with people hooked on these things.”
— Written by Melody Marichalar
— Reported by Melody Marichalar, Clara Alexander, Carlos Mata Rodriguez and Madison Forrest
— Copy edited by Valerie Izquierdo
Recent Stories
Leave a Reply