Walsh: Casino Deal at Hand With Mohegan

Boston mayor says he expects to sign 'surrounding community' agreement worth millions for Hub with Suffolk Downs casino developer Wednesday

After months of fighting unsuccessfully to get East Boston and Charlestown residents an up-or-down vote on proposed casinos just feet away in Revere and Everett, Boston Mayor Marty Walsh said Tuesday night he expects to sign a community mitigation deal with Mohegan Sun that will turn Boston from a foe of that project to a financial beneficiary.

"We're working towards an agreement. We have one in principle," Walsh told reporters shortly before 6 p.m. Tuesday. "My corporation counsel" – the city’s chief attorney – "has been working all day with the lawyers at Mohegan Sun to come up with a final version of .. . the deal. We're not ready to announce it yet. Hopefully we'll have something by tomorrow [Wednesday] to be able to announce publicly. And we'll make it public as soon as I sign it."

Even some of the strongest opponents of casino gambling said they respected that having played and lost several hands in the casino fight – trying to get Boston declared a "host community" with strong veto powers over both Mohegan and Wynn, then trying to get the Gaming Commission to delay any decision on the Boston-area casinos until after the Nov. 4 referendum where voters could repeal the 2011 gambling law outright – it made sense for Walsh to fold and try a new hand.

"We expected that this would have happened, and the writing was on the wall in terms of what he would have been able to do with the Gaming Commission," said John Ribeiro of Repeal the Casino Deal, which is organizing support for a yes vote on Question 3 to repeal casinos.

Matt Cameron of No Eastie Casino said: "He didn't have a choice. He never had a choice. The law's designed to keep him from having a choice" other than trying to negotiate a surrounding community deal with Mohegan. "I see that he tried for us. He went to bat in front of the commission multiple times. He really fought on every level."

The problem, both Ribeiro and Cameron agreed, is how arbitration over "surrounding community" mitigation money and relief works under the Gaming Commission's rules. In a contentious discussion like the one Boston’s been having with both Mohegan and Wynn, if a casino developer and a neighboring community can't agree on how much the casino should pay for traffic and community impacts, ultimately they take their “best and final offers” for a surrounding community deal to three independent arbitrators: one picked by the casino, one by the city, and the third by the Gaming commission.

Paraphrasing the process laid out by this Gaming Commission protocol, Ribeiro said: "The arbiters don't have a choice to go in and conduct any further negotiations and end up somewhere in the middle. They either have to pick A, the casino developer's proposal, or B, the surrounding community's proposal." Unlike what most people imagine arbitration to be – splitting differences, or finding a mean between two extremes – the Massachusetts process comes down to an either-or vote between the casino’s plan and the community’s plan.

With the Gaming Commission arbiter the deciding factor, Somerville and Chelsea, for example, in recent weeks lost votes at arbitration and wound up getting just 10 percent of what they were asking for from Wynn Resorts as compensation for traffic and other impacts from its planned $1.6 billion casino on the Mystic River.

Cameron said he imagined that outcome led Walsh to decide, in effect: We better take what Mohegan's offering in a negotiation, and not risk losing a vote and getting far less, as Chelsea and Somerville did.

"We did just hear from the leaders of both communities that they got a bad deal, and they did get a bad deal, and that's what happens when you go to arbitration. I can't think it's coincidental. The clock was ticking here, and we had a gun to our heads, and he had to do what he had to do," Cameron said.

Walsh said Wynn has been insisting on going to arbitration and won’t negotiate a surrounding community deal like what Mohegan is offering. One huge unknown: Does Mohegan’s deal with Walsh include any provisions committing Boston to oppose Wynn, or declare Mohegan its preferred casino option? That could carry some significant weight as the Gaming Commission decides which contender should win the Eastern Massachusetts casino.

With videographer Nik Saragosa

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