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Rhode Island Tracks Attack New Study

PROVIDENCE, Rhode Island – As reported by the Providence Journal: "For Rhode Island to hit the casino jackpot, almost twice as many Rhode Islanders would have to go to the proposed West Warwick casino as go to Foxwoods -- and more than three times the number who now take their gambling dollars to Mohegan Sun.

"This finding came to light yesterday when the author of a $34,700 University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth study, commissioned by the Senate Democratic leadership, made public a key piece of his study for the first time: the detailed results of a telephone poll.

"…The newly released survey shed new light on the extent to which Rhode Islanders and their Bay State neighbors might step up their gambling if they had the option of visiting the West Warwick casino the Narragansett Indians are promoting, with backing from Harrah's Entertainment.

"It also provided new ammunition for the owners of Lincoln Park and Newport Grand to attack the validity of the study and accuse Clyde W. Barrow, the director of the UMass-Dartmouth Center for Policy Analysis, of significantly playing down potential losses of between 34 percent and 37.5 percent in their own video-slot business.

"…After reviewing the responses to the telephone survey on which he based most of his findings, they accused him of glossing over some of his own findings to make the proposed West Warwick casino appear more attractive.

"They also questioned why he asked both Lincoln Park and Newport Grand for permission to interview their patrons, as he himself had suggested was necessary in testimony to a Rhode Island gambling study commission in October 2002 -- and then didn't do it.

"…The Rhode Island Hospitality Association has commissioned a college professor at Hampshire College in Massachusetts, at a cost of $1,200 a day, plus expenses, to critique the Senate-commissioned study: Robert Goodman, author of The Luck Business, and former director of a 1999 U.S. gambling study…"

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