KUALA LUMPUR (March 31): Malaysia’s Genting Group is seen among the front runners for a casino licence in the New York area, according to The New York Times (NYT).
In a report on Wednesday (March 30), the NYT said that in the next several days, as part of state budget negotiations, Governor Kathy Hochul and legislative leaders may hash out a deal that could authorise three casino licenses for the New York City area.
It said many lawmakers and lobbyists in Albany believe that two of the licenses are likely to be awarded to Genting and MGM Resorts, which operate the two so-called racinos — horse racetracks that have been refashioned as casino-like properties, albeit without games like blackjack or roulette — in Yonkers and Queens, which already employ thousands of union members.
The NYT said gambling companies are spending roughly US$300,000 a month on a lobbying blitz to push the state to fast-track the timetable for New York’s final three casino licenses, and to influence the decision on where the casinos will be located, and who gets to operate them.
It said casino interests argue that New York is losing out on tax revenue from New Yorkers gambling in neighboring states by waiting until 2023 to allow casinos downstate, as an amendment to the State Constitution passed in 2013 dictates.
Hochul, who was endorsed by the Hotel and Gaming Trades Council in her run for a full term, is pushing to include a provision in the state budget to expedite the licenses.
The NYT said Senate Democrats have also embraced the idea, and proposed that operators pay a minimum of US$1 billion for each license, a potential boon for state coffers. But it remains unclear if the final budget, due April 1, will include a minimum licensing fee.
The report said the influential union representing hotel workers has been coordinating with some casino operators, arguing that new casinos in and around New York City — and particularly at existing electronic games facilities in Yonkers and in Queens — would lead to the employment of thousands of hotel workers who lost their jobs when the pandemic undercut the tourism industry.
About 37,000 workers represented by the recently renamed Hotel and Gaming Trades Council, or 95% of its members, were laid off at the height of the pandemic, according to the union. Today, nearly 10,000 of its workers remain unemployed, the union said.
Genting Group, which runs the Resorts World slot machine parlor in Queens, is now the union’s biggest employer.
“These are jobs that pay US$36 an hour, have free family healthcare and have a pension plan,” said Richard Maroko, the current union president, was quoted as saying.
“So they are in dire straits because many of them have been out of work for two years without any immediate prospect of comparable employment.”
Resorts World has invested in a public-relations campaign — New Yorkers for Responsible Gaming — that highlights how hotel workers would stand to gain from new casinos.
It is being run by Neal Kwatra, a political consultant that also does work for the union. The hotel union has continued to exert its sway in Albany: It has steered at least US$880,000 in campaign contributions to Democrats in Albany since 2020, according to campaign disclosure reports.
The 2013 constitutional amendment legalized up to seven full-fledged casinos — rather than just electronic games, of the sort that populate Genting’s Resorts World Casino at Aqueduct in Queens and MGM Resorts’s Empire City Casino in Yonkers.