Gambling again

Gambling wasn’t something Tom Eaton intended to bring up at a Statehouse press conference last week. “That was at the bottom of the list of anything I wanted to talk about,” he says. But someone asked him about putting video-poker machines at horse and dog tracks in the state, and the Republican Senate president answered that he likes the idea. So here we all are, talking about gambling again.


It’s a timely exercise. State Senator Louis D’Allesandro, a Manchester Democrat, is working on a bill that would allow slot machines at the tracks in Belmont, Hinsdale, Salem and Seabrook, and perhaps at the state’s grand hotels. He says he thinks his plan could pass this year.

Eaton has his doubts about that. But he says, “Surveys show that a majority of the public, 65 percent, would approve it, and I think we still have to look at options.” He’s obviously been doing some thinking on the subject. He says the D’Allesandro plan could raise about $200 million a year, an attractive prospect for a state facing a potential $300 million deficit in the next biennium. He also notes that the Legislature and the public at large oppose a sales or an income tax. And the new governor, Democrat John Lynch, has promised to veto any such tax. Lynch is skeptical about expanded gambling, but he hasn’t made any veto promises.