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Emanuel Pushes for a Chicago Casino

Posted on May 23rd, 2011

The top item on the legislative agenda of Rahm Emanuel was the reform of the educational system. Now that he has gotten approval for the plan to impose longer school days and a longer school year, reduce the requirements to fire tenured teachers, and make it more difficult for them to strike, the newly-elected mayor is set to take on an issue which has been left hanging by Chicago politics for years – getting a casino for Chicago. sAmong U.S. cities, Chicago has the third biggest population with almost 2.7 million residents. The metropolitan area, commonly referred to as “Chicagoland” is populated by 9.5 million but is spread out over three states: Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin. Chicago is listed as one of the Top 10 Global Financial Centers and, in a 2010 survey on city rankings conducted by Foreign Policy magazine and A. T. Kierney, Chicago placed 6th just behind Paris and Hong Kong. Forbes magazine ranks it as the 5th most economically powerful city. Chicago is a bastion of the Democrats and counts among its sons many powerful political figures, including Pres. Barack Obama.

Ironically though, this “alpha world city”, as rated by Loughborough University, does not have a casino. There are many casinos in the area, but they are, at least, 20 miles away from Chicago. All are riverboat casinos, cruising or permanently docked. The closest casinos to Chicago are actually located in Indiana. This prompted Mayor Emanuel to say, “We have gambling, or casinos rather, in Chicago. It happens to be in Hammond, Indiana.” Faced with an annual budget deficit of $1.2 billion, Mayor Emanuel is aggressively pushing for a license to construct a casino in Chicago. Referring to the revenue that goes to out-of-Chicago casinos, he says, “We’re losing that revenue. We can’t continue to do that.” Emanuel cites the urgent need to create jobs as the main reason in pushing for a casino. He points out that, “There will be job growth, economic activity if we had a casino here in Chicago with the right conditions associated with that.”

Trying to get a casino for Chicago is not a new thing. Through the years, former Mayor Richard Daley negotiated with a string of governors – including Jim Edgar, George Ryan, Rod Blagojevich and the incumbent Pat Quinn. However, all these talks did not produce results. The governors would not agree to Chicago’s demand for city ownership of the casino, and were asking for a license fee that the city found unacceptable. Daley, who was major of Chicago from 1989 to 2011 also demonstrated an inconsistent attitude towards the attempt to secure a casino license for the city, resulting in difficult negotiations with the state which went nowhere. As the newly-elected mayor in 1989, Daley refused to go along with the state’s riverboat gambling bill. Three years later, he changed his position and favored a proposal by three Las Vegas casinos to build a $2 billion resort-casino in Chicago. This effort, like many others, also came to nothing. But, with a newly-elected mayor and a newly-elected governor, there is hope that this time the project might be realized.

Governor Pat Quinn has voiced support for the plan of Emanuel to acquire a license for a city casino. Annie Thompson, spokesperson for the governor said, “He is open to the idea of a Chicago casino. … If there were a proposal on the table that would help raise the revenue to do that (bring jobs to Illinois), he would be open to that.” Another ally is Senate President John Cullerton (D-Chicago) wh has continually supported calls for previous casino expansions.

However, Emanuel’s push may have come too late for now. The Legislature is due to adjourn its spring term session at the end of the month and there is a long list of items on the agenda still be to resolved including the budget, state pension reforms and workers compensation. A spokesperson for House Speaker Michael Madigan (D-Chicago) would not say whether a package for a new casino could be tabled during the last days of this session. Nevertheless, he added hopefully that, “The question is can you come to agreement on all the issues. I’d think if you’re going to address it, this would be a year to do it because people would be hard-pressed to do it in an election year with new boundaries. Better to do it now.”