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...continued Cities, state, schools socked by smoking ban impact on casino revenues |
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significant decrease in gambling revenues. In fact, Swoik says, some of them are showing increases in 2008 compared to 2007. He adds that the two that have been hurt the most are Illinois and Colorado, and both had smoking bans that went into affect. “When you compare the Chicagoland market with the Northern Indiana market,” Swoik said, “the Chicagoland market in Illinois is down 21.8 percent, and Indiana’s down 4.7 percent. They have the same economy and the same weather that we have. In the St. Louis market, Illinois is down 20.3 percent, Missouri’s down 9.9 percent. And when you compare the Quad Cities to Iowa, the Casino Rock Island was down about 3.9 percent, but Iowa was up 2.6 percent.” While casino revenues took a big hit, admissions didn’t fall nearly as much - meaning that people were spending less time gambling, according to Swoik. “That is because there’s a high percentage of smokers among the people who gamble at the casinos," he said. "And what happens is they may come for two hours and then go outside and smoke for 15 or 20 minutes, and the time they’re away from the tables and the machines is money to this industry. That’s why there’s a difference in those numbers.” The loss of casino revenue translates into a loss of taxes and jobs. According to Swoik, the Illinois casinos employed nearly 1,000 fewer people in October 2008 than they did just a year before. The state lost more than $177 million in revenue and local governments lost nearly $23 million. One of the cities in Southwestern Illinois that is taking it on the chin is Alton. The Argosy Alton Casino’s revenues fell 28 percent in 2008 from 2007. Mayor Don Sandidge of Alton says the city’s revenues from the riverboat are down $700,000 through the first nine months of the current fiscal year. He says he expects total receipts from gambling to be below $6 million this year. They had been as high as $8 million at one point. “Argosy’s been saying for a long time that it was the smoking ban that was causing the problem,” Sandidge said. “I thought it was more the economy than the smoking ban, but  |
if you look at the other boats around, smoking must have a tremendous impact - much more than I anticipated. Others in our area are not down anywhere like the two over here in Illinois.” As a result, says Sandidge, the city had to reduce staff levels by 28 positions. He says the cuts have been across the board - including the police department, fire department, public works, the comptroller’s office and the appraiser’s office. Sandidge says he’s talked to State Rep. Dan Beiser and State Sen. Bill Haine, both Democrats from Alton, about trying to pass some legislation to exempt the gambling boats from the smoking ban - but he’s not encouraged. “I’ve talked to both our representative and our senator about it," Sandidge said. “They think it’s got little to no chance. Apparently there are a lot of people up there that are really anti-smoking, and they pushed this thing through. They didn’t think that it would pass originally, but apparently the anti-smoking group has gotten very strong. They don’t think it’s going to happen, but at least they’ll try." Haine says that the anti-smoking faction in the Illinois Legislature is fanatical. He’s tried to carve out some niche for the casinos, but to no avail. Haine adds that the biggest loser in all of this is education because most of the casino revenues go to the schools. “Iowa passed a smoking ban,” Swoik said, “but they exempted their casinos...and I’m certain that part of that reason was they were looking at our numbers and saw what was happening here.”
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