High Stakes: Public Input on Expanded Gambling

Gov. John Lynch’s Gaming Study Commission is nearing its end, but the time for public comment is just beginning. A new online forum for “deliberative” discussion opened Feb. 25, and organizers are optimistic about the opportunity it gives the public to inform decision-making.

Lynch formed the Study Commission in 2009 to conduct a review of various models of expanded gambling and their potential impacts on the state. Proposals for expanded gaming in New Hampshire range from bringing in video slot machines to full-fledged casinos to upscale casino resorts.

The forum, put together by the Carsey Institute at the University of New Hampshire, is the final piece of a program called “What’s at Stake? Community Conversations to Weigh the Benefits and Risks of Expanded Legal Gambling In New Hampshire.” The program started with 10 group discussions held across the state on Feb. 10. One final group discussion will be held in Berlin on Saturday, March 6, at White Mountain Community College.

The Commission also will hold two traditional public hearings April 6 in the Manchester and Conway areas (time and location TBA), and it’s working with the UNH Survey Center and the Dept. of Resources and Economic Development to conduct public polls. The Commission asked UNH to help it dig even deeper into public sentiment on the issue.

deliberative discussion

“I think it’s a much richer and more robust set of inputs than you would get if you only had a public hearing,” says Commission chair Andy Lietz, “which tend to be dominated by people who have set opinions on one side or another.”

Lietz says the Commission wanted to engage more citizens in a discussion focused not on taking sides but on developing an informed opinion about gaming. “It’s my belief that this deliberative democratic process, as implemented by the Carsey Institute, (goes) a long way to do that,” he says.

Conversation, not consensus, is at the heart of What’s at Stake. “It’s to clarify the opinions, the diversity of views, so it’s not just wrapped up in being ‘for’ or ‘against,’” says project director Martha Parker.

Parker facilitated the group discussion in Conway on Feb. 10. She found that many people attending had different opinions about gaming in New Hampshire, but they often drew those conclusions from the same set of values.

“We’re helping citizens define those common grounds within which they can have the conversation of seeing they both want the same thing but are looking at it from a different perspective,” Parker says. “We’re trying to understand what motivates people to believe what they believe.”

For the most part, the conversations have confirmed that people’s beliefs are largely predictable. UNH professor Bruce Mallory, coordinator of What’s at Stake, was not surprised, for example, that the large turnout in Salem was overwhelmingly supportive of gaming. A racetrack has operated in that community for 100 years, and in some cases has employed entire generations of families. It’s part of the local culture, he says. In Conway, however, Parker heard concern about preserving the state’s natural beauty as part of its quality of life.

These conversations are not necessarily uncovering new ground, admits Mallory, but they might. He’s still sorting through the data and written reports from all 10 groups, so it’s a bit too early to tell if the conversations or online forum will yield any public perspectives that the Commission or legislators wouldn’t have come up with on their own. But that’s not the point, Mallory says.

“What’s new about it is that people who otherwise wouldn’t be informed or participate in a public hearing are now informed and participating,” he says. “So we’ve moved the democratic process beyond special interest groups who are the ones who will be lobbying, and we’ve created a place for people to become informed and engaged and understand what other people have to say.”

online forum

Almost 250 people have signed up for the online forum, hosted at www.e-democracy.org/nh. Registration is free and remains open until March 15, when the forum will close. All posts are viewable by the public, regardless of registration, but only registered users can add their own comments. Participation is moderated to a limited extent by trained facilitators, Parker says, and she will likely prompt some discussion around major themes that came up in the group discussions. But, she stresses, the forum is really led by participants.

The Commission will collect summaries of public input gathered through What’s at Stake by April 20, the same day reports are due from the Commission’s own public hearings. This public component is the final stage of inquiry. A joint legislative hearing was held at the State House Feb. 2, where House and Senate members gave testimony to the Commission.

The 15-member group has been meeting since September and has explored a full range of considerations: the status of gaming in New Hampshire and other states, the models of gaming proposed for New Hampshire, potential for raising revenue from gaming and how it could then be spent, the social impacts and costs of gambling, and branding of potential New Hampshire gaming ventures. Their report on all areas of study is due to the governor by May 25.

That report is “absolutely not” intended to make a recommendation to Lynch about how to handle the gaming question, Lietz stresses. “We will try to put together some findings that will be helpful to the governor and Legislature … We will give the report to the people who are really responsible for making the decisions,” he says.

All meetings of the Commission are open to the public. Agendas, minutes and additional materials are available at www.nh.gov/gsc.

Posted by Hilary Niles on Feb 26 2010. Filed under By the Issues, Commerce, gambling, Government, public hearings & public records. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry