One day after Connecticut Attorney General George Jepsen cautioned against building an East Windsor casino operated by the state’s tribal nations, House Speaker Joe Aresimowicz declared that a new casino in Connecticut will not be built anywhere without federal approval.
CT Post reporter Bill Cummings has more:
House Speaker Joe Aresimowicz on Wednesday said the chances are “zero” that a new casino will be built in Bridgeport or anywhere in Connecticut in the next five years without federal approval.
“The idea of an additional casino being built in Connecticut without Bureau of Indian Affairs approval is zero,” Aresimowicz told reporters. “It is not going to happen. We need to move forward with a comprehensive plan of what gambling looks like.”
The comments came a day after state Attorney General George Jepsen said, because the BIA has not published its approval for revisions to the state’s tribal compacts on the federal register, an East Windsor casino to be jointly built by the Mashantucket Pequot and Mohegan Indians is not formally approved, and it would be “imprudent” to proceed with the project.
Full story here.
So why throw the baby out with the bath water, proceed with MGM.
Read the fine print: Minimum of FIVE YEARS before a casino is built in Bridgeport. Have a nice day.
George Jepsen has now become an obstructionist in the casino debate.
As long as the BIA does nothing nothing can done.
That’s a crock of shit!!!
When do we vote for a new speaker?????
Five years. FIVE YEARS.
I mean, is anyone surprised?. Don’t want to say “ told you so” and get accused of being a “ miserable blogger” here again,but did you really think MGM was going to swoop in and be able to build here??
Ideas and talk of building casinos,racetracks,movie theater complexes, entertainment destinations has been going on since the Mandanici era, and people fall for it every few years.By the time CT passes legislation allowing another casino, MGM or Wynn will have built one in Porchester,on the water, making any dream of having one in Bpt a distant memory… Meanwhile, let’s build more housing complexes!
WHAT OUTRAGEUOUS, GOLD-COAST HUBRIS IS BEING ACTED OUT IN THE GA BY A BOUGHT-AND PAID-FOR-SPEAKER AND GOLD-COAST AG!!!…
“…House Speaker Joe Aresimowicz on Wednesday said the chances are ‘zero’ that a new casino will be built in Bridgeport or anywhere in Connecticut in the next five years without federal approval.
“The idea of an additional casino being built in Connecticut without Bureau of Indian Affairs approval is zero, Aresimowicz told reporters. It is not going to happen. We need to move forward with a comprehensive plan of what gambling looks like…”
That last sentence is a perfectly-coded message that translates to: “The Gold Coast doesn’t want to lose its cheap (Bridgeport) labor and political control over the rest of the state. We’re going to use the standard stalling technique of the necessity of an expensive, years-long study, to justify our decision of ‘No casino for you!'”
Of course, there is no reason why legal problems with a tribal casino should preclude a private casino… And it is no mystery that this most-incompetent-of-all-modern-Connecticut-Attorneys General would use the most biased, bought-off incompetent, Connecticut House Speaker in recent times to make the unilateral, illegitimate (contra-constitutional) proclamation that “…there is a zero chance that a casino will be built in Bridgeport in the next five years…”
That is truly bs. MGM should simply work with Bridgeport and use the company’s legal and political reach to ignore state obstinacy, and just build the casino, and run it under federal sanction as it works with the majority of the state electorate and political apparatus to create proper legal status at the state level… The allure of a “taboo” Bridgeport casino would probably make it the state’s/regions #1 tourist and gambling draw, as it counters the illegitimate, unconstitutional state efforts (bought paid for by the Gold Coast, without any consideration for the rest of the state — much less, the Hartford-area/tribal economic predicament) in order to maintain control of Bridgeport and the rest of the state as it assures maintenance of its regional advantages via the exploitation of (mainly) Bridgeport, and he rest of the state…
Time for Bridgeport and MGM/gambling industry to flex their serious, combined, electoral and legal-economic muscle…
We don’t need federal approval to build MGM in Bridgeport!
Do we not need state legislative approval for the license?
Yes.
Wrong. We don’t need a fucking casino in Bridgeport. Not yet at any rate.
Don’t need federal,but you need state for commercial gaming.
I believe if Dave Walker is elected governor and with formation of the Connecticut gaming commission, made up by non-politicians. There will be commercial gaming in less than four years.