AC Chamber To Campaign Against New Casinos In New Jersey

The Greater Atlantic City Chamber is launching a campaign to persuade its members and local residents to oppose the new plan proposed by state lawmakers to expand the gambling industry in New Jersey beyond Atlantic City. Lawmakers from the Garden State are looking at licensing two new casinos in North Jersey which are expected to compete with out of state casinos that are impacting New Jersey’s casino industry.

Local media reports state that officials from the Greater Atlantic City Chamber emailed a message with a link to the chamber’s action center which included an anti-casino message addressed to New Jersey officials, including those who belong to the state Senate Budget Committee.

It appears that Chamber members are against the proposal to amend the state Constitution to expand the gambling industry which was initiated after the collapse of Atlantic City’s gambling industry. Two competing plans from State Senate President Steve Sweeney and Assembly Speaker Vincent Prieto were submitted after which Governor Christie decided on a compromise proposal.

The bill now proposes two casinos in North Jersey. It doesn’t name the locations but specifies that the casinos need to be located at least 72 miles away from Atlantic City. The referendum to amend the constitution will be put to the state’s voters later this year.

Atlantic City has already seen a massive decline in casino revenue, dropping to $2.56 billion in 2015 from $5.2 billion in 2006 and many in the city fear more damage to its prospects from the new casinos. But state legislators are pushing for it citing economic development, employment opportunities and improved tax revenues to the state. The budget committee will be meeting next week in Trenton to discuss the referendum.

The message sent out by the Chamber starts with an appeal to all public officials to vote against allowing the referendum to go forward. Bob Marshall, the chamber’s legislative affairs director is urging members and supporters to present their case opposing the casinos to the budget committee officials at the hearing scheduled in Trenton.

In a statement, Bob Marshall said,

We’ve been up there multiple times already, (Chamber President) Joe Kelly and myself, and at this point, we think we really need the businesses to come up. In addition to the outreach to (legislative) offices, they’ve got to see the people who are going to be affected by this bad public policy.

Marshall added that the message with the link to the online action center went to around 1,000 members of the local chamber in an attempt to inform and mobilize them to act against these two new casinos.

Adrian Sterne

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