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See how younger Cape Cod college students discovered about Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe
Centerville Elementary School held a multicultural day on the college and featured the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe.
- The Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe warns that permitting gaming machines at Raynham Park can be an “existential threat” to its First Light Casino.
- At concern are “historical horse racing terminals,” which the tribe says are basically slot machines.
- The tribe states that income from its on line casino is essential for funding its authorities providers, together with healthcare, housing, and schooling.
If Raynham Park is allowed to function gaming machines beneath state senate economic development legislation, it will be “an existential threat” to the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe, Tribal Chairman Brian Weeden warned in a letter.
Raynham Park is a former greyhound racetrack positioned in Raynham, lower than 20 minutes from the Tribe’s First Light Casino in Taunton.
At concern is a kind of playing machine known as a “historical horse racing terminal,” which makes use of outcomes from previous horse races to generate outcomes to bets. Weeden mentioned that the machines “look like slot machines, sound like slot machines, and are played exactly like slot machines” regardless of technically being primarily based on historic horse race outcomes.
The machines aren’t at the moment operated in Massachusetts.
The House model of the proposed financial growth laws, which handed on July 8, would permit the machines at Raynham Park. After a lot debate, the Senate model doesn’t point out the machines in any respect.
Here’s what we all know.
Mass. laws concerning historic horse racing terminals
In the state Senate, Sen. Kelly Dooner, a Taunton Republican, filed, and later withdrew, an modification that might permit historic horse racing playing on digital machines at sure amenities. A Dooner spokesperson mentioned the proposal originated within the House, and that Dooner’s model would “help better support the local community and ensure that jobs created will be local.”
The spokesperson advised the Taunton Gazette, earlier than the modification was withdrawn, that each Raynham Park and First Light Casino may very well be profitable.
“While we greatly respect the concerns of the tribe, we believe there is room for thoughtful progress and a range of opportunities within every community,” the spokesperson mentioned.
But modification #234, sponsored by state Sen. Dylan Fernandes, a Falmouth Democrat, would have prohibited historic horse racing terminals in Massachusetts. Taunton City Council voted July 22 to help a decision calling for the Senate to cross Fernandes’ modification. The subsequent day, July 23, the modification was rejected by the Senate.
“Just as the Tribe has finally begun to stand on equal footing, the rug is once again being pulled out from under it,” Weeden wrote in his July 20 letter to Senate President Karen Spilka. “This time, the threat comes from an attempt to authorize so-called ‘Historic Horse Racing ‘machines at Raynham Park, just minutes from First Light Casino. These are not horse races. They are slot machines masquerading as pari-mutuel wagering, wrapped in legal fiction to circumvent the Commonwealth’s gaming laws.”
It shouldn’t be instantly clear why Dooner’s modification was withdrawn. A spokesperson for Dooner didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark Friday.
Casino essential to Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe
The First Light Casino in Taunton performs an important position within the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe’s funds, Weeden wrote.
“Gaming revenues fund the basic functions of Tribal government. They pay for healthcare, housing, education, public safety, elder services, infrastructure, and the continued exercise of Tribal sovereignty,” Weeden mentioned.
“The Tribe has spent generations fighting simply to exist as a sovereign people in its ancestral homeland,” he mentioned. “In 2025 — after decades of obstacles — it finally opened First Light Casino in Taunton, creating jobs, economic opportunity, and a path toward self-sufficiency for more than 3,200 Tribal citizens.”
A consultant of Genting, the corporate that has financially backed the First Light Casino undertaking in Taunton, spoke on the City Council assembly on Tuesday concerning the affect of permitting Raynham Park to have horse racing machines.
Kevin Jones, a Genting worker who described the corporate because the “long time investor, partner, and friend of the tribe,” mentioned that competitors from Raynham Park would forestall the First Light Casino from attracting additional funding.
The tribe is looking for funding to construct a everlasting on line casino constructing construction. Currently, the First Light Casino consists of short-term trailers.
Jones mentioned that Genting couldn’t finance a bigger on line casino undertaking if there was competitors from Raynham Park.
“As their financier, we could not finance that, because how do you price the risk,” Jones mentioned. “All the sudden, tomorrow, you’re out of business because somebody is cannibalizing everything you do.”
What occurs subsequent?
Now, the 2 variations of the laws head to a convention committee, the place members of the House and Senate will negotiate and produce a closing invoice. Since the negotiations haven’t but occurred, the ultimate invoice might permit horse racing terminals, or it might preserve the established order — whereby the machines aren’t operated in Massachusetts.
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