Casinos Creep Onshore After Storm
By SEAN MUSSENDEN
Media General News Service
BILOXI, Miss.—The slot machines no longer pay off in the Las Vegas of the South.
The nine massive casino barges that line the water here sit silent and vacant, some tossed by a two-story storm surge onto a patch of sandy soil across a coastal highway.
Their new, dry resting spot foreshadows the future of gambling in this poor, intensely religious state with an uneasy dependence on casinos.
Owners of the coastal gambling palaces will rebuild over the next two years — and most will likely do so on land.
When casinos were first legalized here in 1990, state law restricted them to the waters off the coast or on the banks of the Mississippi River. No longer.
State lawmakers quickly scrapped the restrictions after Hurricane Katrina to appease casino executives fretting about rebuilding one of Mississippi’s most important industries.
“The state is taking the necessary precautions to provide safety for the casinos and, in turn, is providing jobs for thousands of displaced Mississippi workers,” Gov. Haley Barbour said after signing the new law that allows casinos 800 feet inland from the coast.
The move has angered many conservative Christians in the heart of the Bible Belt. They accuse casino companies of using the catastrophe to spread gambling further across the state.
In the late 1980s, off-shore gambling cruises picked up passangers at ports along the Mississippi coast. Then, in the early 1990s, the legislature allowed floating casino barges to operate without leaving port. Now, land-based casinos are just around the corner.
“Over the years we’ve seen gambling creep closer and closer to being onshore,” said William Perkins, editor of the Baptist Record, the weekly newspaper of the Mississippi Baptist Convention.
He believes the 800-foot restrictions won’t last long. “They’re not going to be happy till they reach the Tennessee state line and they have a slot machine in every gas station,” he said.
A representative of Mississippi’s casino trade group could not be reached for comment. But several lawmakers predicted that the 800-foot restriction would hold. It was necessary, they said, to keep both coastal residents and the casino structures safe.
“It’s hard to ask the casino owners to reinvest that kind of money without providing some security,” said Biloxi city council member William Stallworth.
The clash between the state’s persistent poverty problems and its strong religious opposition to gambling make it likely the debate over casinos will never be settled.
Mississippi is devoutly religious. A study by the Glenmary Research Center in 2000 found only five other states with more churches per capita. The strong core of evangelical Southern Baptists vehemently opposes gambling on the grounds that the Bible forbids it.
“When the casinos take all the money they can from a family, that person goes to the church for help. We see the wreckage from gambling. It offends us to hear politicians saying it is worth the price,” Perkins said.
Mississippi also has more poor people than any other state. Almost one in five residents live below the federal poverty line, according to the Census. Residents need the jobs and the government needs the tax revenue gambling provides.
The industry employed almost 14,000 people along the coast. The state takes in $334 million in gambling taxes a year from casinos along the coast and the Mississippi River. That’s roughly 7 percent of the state’s budget, according to Larry Gregory, executive director of the Mississippi Gaming Commission.
“Right now, we’re losing about $500,000 a day in tax revenue just from closed casinos on the coast,” Gregory said.
In only 15 years, Mississippi has become the third largest casino market in the country, taking in $2.8 billion annually from its 29 casinos. Only Las Vegas and Atlantic City, N.J., are larger, according to the American Gaming Association.
The gambling industry is “going to be a great restart engine for us,” said Jim Barkdsale, who heads the state’s rebuilding efforts. “I guarantee you that after (Hurricane) Andrew they wished they’d had the casino industry to revive them” in Miami, he said.
At the Isle of Capri casino and hotel in Biloxi, repairs started weeks ago. The casino barge has partly torn away from the adjacent hotel. On a recent weekday afternoon, workers were cleaning up flooding damage and counting stacks of recovered chips.
Sylvia Beddingfield began working at the Capri a few months after it opened almost 15 years ago, first as a cashier, then in housekeeping. She has managed to hang onto her job during repairs, a luxury. Though it could be years before all the casinos on this strip reopen, she hopes for a quick recovery.
“We survived before the casinos came, we did,” she said. “But it was a lot harder back then to survive.”
Sean Mussenden is a national correspondent in Media General’s Washington Bureau. E-mail Mussenden at smussenden@mediageneral.com