A losing hand
Governor Rendell said at a morning news conference it’s a “fair question” to ask whether Philadelphia should ever get a second casino in the city, Chris Brennan reports on the blog PhillyClout.
Since the state Gaming Control Board yanked the license for the proposed Foxwoods Casino in South Philadelphia, legislators have been talking about amending state law to leave Philly with only one of the two casinos originally envisioned.
Rendell, who will be out of office in two weeks, noted that the Sugarhouse Casino is up and running in Northern Liberties, and that gamblers have options a few minutes away on I-95 in Chester and Bensalem.
There are plenty of neighborhood groups that will toast the death of a second casino in the city. But the loss will kick a bit of a hole in the city’s five-year fiscal plan , since the city was counting on $11.8 million a year from Foxwoods starting in the 2012-13 budget year.
And if upstate lawmakers decide they want to rescind some of the wage tax reduction Philly residents got from the casino revenues statewide, this could be even more painful.
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