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New York Budget Targets Gamblers, Smokers

"The 2002-03 state budget adopted late last week seeks to squeeze both segments of New York's population a little more to help close a projected revenue shortfall of $6.8 billion.The most massive expansion of gambling in state history calls for establishment of as many as six new Indian-run casinos, slot machine-like video terminals and New York's entrance into a multistate lottery game.

"The new lottery, formerly known as the Big Game and now called Mega Millions, is already off the ground. The first drawing was Friday night. The second will be Tuesday night.

"…The enhanced gaming opportunities about to be afforded New Yorkers will continue the state's growing fiscal reliance on legalized gambling.

"State Sen. Ronald Stafford, a Plattsburgh Republican who chairs the Senate's Finance Committee, defended the gambling package in the same terms used by all Albany leaders, from Gov. Pataki on down. Stafford said casino gambling is a fact of life in New York - there are casinos on Indian land near Utica and in northern New York - and he declared that the state is tired of losing revenues to those establishments, Atlantic City and tribe-run casinos in Connecticut…"

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