Krusin' the Capitol
By Nebraska State Senator Lowen Kruse
2004
Week 5
February 7, 2004
Hi-
For all you pansies living in warm southern climes: we have snow. Nearly 30
inches of the white flakes in the last two weeks. My snow blower died after
the first six. I have not come home from Lincoln three nights. When I did,
to help Ruth shovel out, I had to shovel myself in from the street. My weapon
of choice is a #10 scoop from farming days, which is steel and can cut ice and
pry snow pack. I can throw a large chunk of snow pack only 7 foot up. (Used
to do better. Don't get old.) That makes a good stack most places, but is
not enough height to keep it from sliding back down on piles near the house.
At first I simply took large scoops out of the middle, enough to avoid high
center. The rest packed down and we were surviving. Until more came. Ruth
found a fellow and his son, from her 24th Street connections, who came with their
old truck and pushed out some of the new. She still had to shovel the car out
three times. I have shoveled about three hours, breaking out snow pack and
trying to keep a path open. Wonderful health check. Beats that treadmill the
Dr. likes. Parenthetically, I do enjoy shoveling. Makes me feel young again,
like when I shoveled grain on a threshing crew. Two of us could do 50 bushel
in five minutes. I have purposely not put a break in this paragraph so you
can see what a wall of snow looks like. Do not fear. We are well, safe, and
sassy.
The best segway: we are being snowed under with bills and realities. This
week someone figured out we have more folks building ethanol plants than we
planned when we agreed to a subsidy. The state school aid/property tax subsidy
is growing rapidly, even after we adjusted the rates. Road repair is running
behind. The State Fair is broke. Building maintenance has been seriously
delayed all across the state, because of budget cuts. Soon some schools will be
calling for bonds to build new, replacing that which is deteriorated. Law
enforcement cannot talk to each other by radio (patrol to sheriff to local
police). Motorola has a solution for $100 million.
Some think we should sell off some of our utilities to pay the bills. That
would cost our citizens more in the future. Does not make sense. Our biggest
cost is education. Our cuts to K-12 transfer to property tax and our cuts to
the University have already hurt our economic development. When someone says
they have a place we have not thought to cut, I just sigh. We have cut off
children and grandmas. Who did we miss?
While I am on a grump, might as well tackle the casino question. The bottom
line is that casinos cost us money. We cannot afford even one. They have
purty lights on the outside, bells on the inside and cushy carpet underfoot.
Nice. But we are broke and I find no study that shows a net gain on taxes.
That does not make sense to a lot of folks, since there is so much money
there. But one-third is sent to Las Vegas and the rest will not pay the bills.
Dr. Ernie Goss, our Creighton economist who has studied it as it applies to
Omaha, stated: "Few areas in the U. S. can realistically boast that gambling
actually contributes to overall economic development." The only possibility for
breaking even is one "destination" casino in downtown Omaha. "Destination"
means that folks will flock in from other states because ours is so huge and
glitzy that they just have to see it. I cannot imagine that a million people in
Minnesota and Kansas are going to get sucked in to coming to Nebraska on a
regular basis. If it is just us and Iowa, it is a loser.
My friends in Iowa do not think they are making money on theirs, but it is
the devil to try to get out of them. Casinos shift money around, big time.
Those on the receiving end have enough clout (and money!) to keep the cycle
going. The transition back to normalcy would be painful, even though it would save
money.
We hear the cry "Let the people vote." Trust the people. I do trust the
people, IF they are informed. We do not have the money to inform them and I will
guarantee you that most believe the gambling promotion that this is a cash
cow.
Simple facts. "Look at all the jobs a casino would produce." Well, Hello.
Most of the jobs in the Council Bluffs casinos are our people, and most
purchases by casinos are from Nebraska. We just move that across the river. "Look
at all the sales produced." Hello. If that is Nebraska $$, it is reducing
our local merchants sales by that amount. "Look at all the sales tax on
products." Hello. We lose more sales tax than we gain, because fewer refrigerators
will be sold.
There would be extra jobs in a large casino, for Nebraskans. However, one
casino, Dr. Goss reports, would drain 2,294 jobs away from surrounding counties.
Part of that is because of the loss of spending, which is going to the
casino. One-third of profits goes out of state and the other two-thirds does not
circulate in the same way that dollars spent on teachers salaries or new buildings do.
The tri-petition plan being circulated is a disaster for our tax dollars. It
takes $$ from our businesses and puts them into bars and clubs. So we are
trying to devise a petition which would compete with that, which puts the
legislature, and therefore the people, in charge of future decisions. I will vote
to get this petition on the ballot and then will work hard to defeat it and all
expanded-gambling petitions. We are rolling the dice, admittedly. It would
be better to defeat that tri-petition. But I do not think we can. People
will vote to let the suckers pay our bills. We will be the suckers.
If our petition were to pass, we will still be in trouble, but more delayed.
If the legislature refuses to license any, which the present legislature
could well do, the casinos will spend big money to get their own senators elected.
Term limits plays right into this. They can "buy" an open seat for
$200,000, which is chump change to them, and no citizen with an independent mind can
compete with that.
Hang in there!
Lowen
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