State Sen. Glenn Grothman, R-West Bend, is coming down hard against a proposed off-reservation casino in Kenosha, which he calls “a social ill” that will hurt Wisconsin's economy more than help.
Grothman said on Monday that despite the claim by the Menominee Nation that the casino they want to build would create more than 3,300 jobs, the benefit of those jobs would be canceled out by the harm to gamblers themselves.
“It’s a zero-sum game,” Gorthman said. “Society is not getting wealthier from fleecing innocent people.
“You will see jobs there in that casino. You won’t see all the jobs that have disappeared in other areas.”
Grothman said he’d prefer the state create jobs in manufacturing and other, higher-paying sectors.
Meanwhile, he said the average person in Wisconsin loses $200 a year from casinos.
“We don’t need to up that by 80 or 90,” Grothman said.
Gov. Scott Walker must approve of the casino, and has said he wants the agreement of all the state’s tribes first. He’s also said he’d like the Menominee and the Potawatomi tribes to work together to ensure there’s no net gain in gambling in the state.
But Grothman calls that plan “an impossible standard.”
“That’s ridiculous,” he said. “Of course, there will be a net gain of gambling in the state of Wisconsin.
“If you have a big new fancy casino, right on I-94 where you don’t have to fight the Milwaukee traffic and you have better parking, of course…more people are going to gamble in Kenosha.”
