The city of Boston ventured way out on a limb with a bid to delay the awarding of a Greater Boston casino license until after a November vote on the state’s casino law. Yesterday the limb snapped. Time to move on!
The state Gaming Commission voted, unanimously and correctly, to proceed with the licensing process, even with the repeal vote set for November. The city presented an extraordinarily weak argument in favor of a delay.
City lawyers argued, for example, that Boston would suffer irreparable harm if the license is awarded, mostly in the form of the unrecoverable cost of negotiating mitigation agreements with the two casino developers hoping to score the license.
But those are agreements that should already be in place, and would be if the city hadn’t chosen to play stalling games — long before the state’s highest court approved the repeal question for the ballot.
The city also argued that voters would suffer vague harm if the commission designates the license winner before the November vote. Voters are too stupid, apparently, to separate the designation of the license from a subsequent vote on overall repeal.
But it turns out the effect on voters helped convince commissioners to deny the city’s request for a stay. Because, really, since when is more information a negative thing? If the license is designated, the public will be even better informed about the impact of their vote.
The Walsh administration really hasn’t earned another inch of rope on this issue. The city’s corporation counsel, Eugene O’Flaherty, yesterday said Boston is still staking claim to host community status — already rejected by the commission — and might still take the issue to court.
To have stayed the proceedings would have been to grant Boston unfair consideration at the expense of all other parties, with no guarantee of a resolution of that lingering dispute. The decision was a no-brainer.