The Encore casino and hotel almost completed and about 100 days away from opening without a license to operate is the most clear and present danger to the city’s well-being.
Nothing is more important to this city’s finances and its future viability than the opening of the doors to the Encore casino and hotel – and in a timely fashion.
At this moment, it is almost a disaster that the project is without a gaming license.
To be without a gaming license at
this point in the project is like jumping from a plane and hurtling toward the earth with a parachute that hasn’t yet opened.
Will the parachute open for us?
We hope so.
We know only this for a public fact, the upcoming suitability decision to be made by the Gaming Commission remains a question.
Many say the decision is in the bag.
The folks at Mintz Levin Strategies and former governor Bill Weld might say they know what’s coming – but they really don’t.
Can what was done in Las Vegas last week with the Nevada Gaming Commission fining Wynn Resorts $20 million for lying before the NGC be exactly what will happen here?
Pay a fine. Take the slap on the wrist. Open the doors and get down to the business of making money and distributing it, and a lot of it, to this city of ours so we can stay alive and prosper.
What’s good for Nevada is good enough for Massachusetts, right?
Wrong.
The entire process of granting this gaming license to Steve Wynn and Wynn Resorts from the start has been tainted by a tidal wave of money used to buy influence, to cover up wrongdoing and to discredit the casino contestants from Revere and to have them disqualified.
The problem with this?
One hundred days from opening and the casino/hotel is without a license.
This is a colossal problem for Everett.
Time is of the essence.
We predict that the new Chair of the Massachusetts Gaming Commission Attorney Cathy Judd-Stein will not be taking her stage cues from the NGC.
This is, after all, Massachusetts. We do things differently here.
Judd-Stein did not take the chair of the MGC to lead her distinguished life in the law to ruination and to her disrepute.
She took a job from the governor at his request.
Knowing the governor as we do, we’d predict he gave Judd-Stein the go ahead to do whatever she feels must be done without his approval and she understood this when she accepted.
We suspect Judd-Stein cannot be bought. She will not spit on her own face to make a ridiculous decision. She will not ruin herself by paying no attention to the law.
The law requires that all those seeking a suitability OK from the MGC cannot lie before the MGC when questioned.
Lying before the MGC is a felony.
Those committing felonies cannot be suitable to hold a gaming license here.
It is believed nearly a half dozen high-ranking officials past and present at Wynn Resorts, including its founder Steven Wynn as well, testified before the MGC and lied before the MGC during its suitability hearings.
How the company can be given a gaming license defies the law. The law doesn’t provide for this in Massachusetts if the law is followed.
We urge Judd-Stein to be more Boston than Las Vegas with her ruling.
She needs to know Everett’s casino/hotel must open.
Who owns it doesn’t matter. Whatever name identifies it is not so important.
That it opens, matters.
The law matters … or does it not matter when it comes to casino gaming?