6 March 27 - april 2, 2025 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents “Budgeting for this level of hiring would not make the city safer, and it would spell doomsday for the city budget,” said Jaime Castro, president of the Dallas Police Association, at a public hearing. “Parks, streets, libraries and other city services improve our quality of life and contribute to a safer city.” The majority of the City Council openly opposed the proposition, and the loudest opponent was the pro-police- pension-funding Bazaldua. “I think these HERO amendments are nothing more than political agendas,” Bazaldua said on Inside Texas Politics. Yearly recruitment goals for 2025 have already been re- duced from 400 to 325, and then even lower to 300, and in- terim police Chief Michael Igo said any higher recruitment rate is unrealistic. “Moving the needle to 325 means me moving critical re- sources out of the patrol bureau with the thought of in- creased response times and increase in crime overall,” he said. In 2023, the city lowered its yearly police recruitment goal from 290 to 250. Eddie Garcia, the police chief then, de- scribed the original goal, which is lower than the city’s cur- rent bare minimum, as unrealistic. Now, the city appears bound by law to meet the new po- lice force requirement, and it likely needs a substantial eco- nomic boost to do that. In February, the city proposed redirecting $7.7 million, of a Biden-era $350 million grant, for police recruitment funding, but it’s not nearly enough to hire at the rate voters who supported Proposition U de- mand. Another successful proposition Dallas HERO pushed allows residents to sue the City Council for violat- ing the City Charter, and they have threatened to do so if the city doesn’t reach the 4,000 quota in a “timely manner.” Though the proposition intentionally omits a deadline, Dallas HERO has suggested a three to five-year timeline. According to police officials, hiring 325 officers would cost the city an extra $12 million. Other U.S. cities, facing even worse economic conditions, have witnessed great success following the legalization of gambling. Biloxi, Mississippi, is one of them. Biloxi, The Playground of the South B iloxi is a quaint beach town straight out of a Southern Living picture book, complete with a lighthouse. The town of fewer than 50,000 residents will entertain 4.3 million people passing through, mainly at one of the Play- ground of the South’s eight resort-style casinos. “[Gambling has] been great for the city of Biloxi,” Mayor Andrew “FoFo” Gilich said. Biloxi opened its first casino in 1992 after the state al- lowed its constituents to vote on legalizing gambling. It started as dockside table games aboard large-wheeled pad- dleboats and now consists of an elaborate row of barges with massive casinos fit to entertain up to 7,000 guests total. A taxing formula was established when gaming was legalized, making Biloxi one of the only cities to receive a direct cut of the gambling tax revenue. “[City funding] depends on how fair and creative the state gaming authorities set up the situation … Mississippi is very creative,” Gilich said. In the Magnolia State, each casino is taxed 12% on its gross gaming revenue, 8% goes to the state’s general fund, and 4% is divided by Biloxi among public education, public safety and the city’s general fund. “We were the fifth largest from a dollar standpoint, from a gross gaming revenue in, in the country,” said Gilich. Since COVID-19 restrictions were lifted in 2021, the annual total revenue between all eight casinos has been one billion dollars. This means the city is making $40 mil- lion from gambling alone, and of that, $8 million will go directly to public safety. Gambling revenue makes up 40% of the city’s $20 million total police budget. When Mississippi legalized in-person sports betting in 2018, the same tax formula was adopted, and the city planned to hire six new police officers with an anticipated $1 million added to its budget. Hesitation to legalize gambling is often tied to political parties and the trouble that gambling addiction can cause. Gambling opponents also note that the added revenue to city public safety efforts is often defeated by the possible in- crease in crime that casinos can introduce. Mayor Gilich in- sists Biloxi has remained safe. When asked if the crime rate went up following the legalization of casinos, he succinctly said: “Not for us.” If Dallasites were hesitant to support casino gambling be- fore, maybe this would win them over: Biloxi has been able to keep its property taxes stagnant for 28 years while also continuing to boost education and public safety. “In Biloxi, you know, the casino part of the deal has been tremendous for us,” Gilich said. Why Casinos May Not Be a Good Fit Are the benefits of additional police officers canceled out by increased crime commonly associated with casinos? The answer isn’t cut and dry. A study by two economics professors at the University of Nevada analyzing national county-level crime data, excluding Nevada, found that there isn’t a direct causal relationship between crime and casinos. “Our results show an increase in crime associated with casino expansion in some circumstances but decreases in others, with the results particularly contingent upon the crimes examined, whether the casino is a commercial casino or an Indian casino, and how long the casino has been open,” says the study. The study found that crime can increase in the first few years of a casino opening but levels out within 12 years. The same study, however, found that legalized gambling has more significant long-term adverse effects in the cities and counties surrounding the host. “A difference-in-differences model suggests that in the long term commercial casinos are associated with no signifi- cant change in crime in their host county, but crimes in sur- rounding adjacent counties do significantly increase.” This could be bad news for Dallasites, as the land Adelson purchased in Irving has also been posed as a site for Texas’ first casino. The Las Vegas Sands Corp. submitted a zoning request to the city of Irving to approve a massive mixed-use development complete with a resort-style casino. The bright side for gambling opponents is that the casino element of the proposal was dropped ahead of a City Council vote because of community backlash. Once gambling was removed from the equation, a future Adelson development passed in a 6-3 vote. That doesn’t mean groundbreaking will happen anytime soon. “I cannot commit to building a 4 million-square-foot project and spend $4 billion; the economics will not work without a casino piece,” Mark Boekenheide, a Sands Corp. executive, told Irving City Council members on March 21. But Dallas HERO’s executive director, Damien LeVeck, isn’t absolutely opposed to using tax revenue from gambling to fund the police as Proposition U mandates. “If there’s a proposal on the table beyond the budget pa- rameters outlined in Prop U that would allocate funds to DPD [and] their pension, we’d love to hear it. … Public safety should be the number one priority for any municipal gov- ernment,” Leveck wrote in an email. Dallas City Council member Cara Mendelsohn, mean- while, dismissed gambling revenue as a means to fund city police. “Given the limited results of the lottery to address educa- tion funding, I wouldn’t count on gambling to fund public safety,” she wrote in an email. “State leaders have said pub- licly that gambling will not move forward this session. Law enforcement is a core city function and should be paid by a steady, permanent funding source like property taxes.” Aside from a linkage to an increase in crime and the unre- liability of any future amendments being made to the Texas Constitution to allow betting, gambling is highly addictive. A 2024 study from the National Bureau of Economic Research found that those most susceptible to problem gambling are the poor. “Gambling tax revenues, if a state makes the mistake of legalizing casinos or sports bookies, should be used to defray the many categories of costs to communities and public well-being that the gambling operators cause,” Russell F. Coleman, chairman of Texans Against Gambling wrote in an email. “The revenues, even at extremely high tax rates, don’t cover those costs.” A Global Casino Power Comes to Dallas A fter 23 years of majority stake ownership, self-made bil- lionaire entrepreneur and Preston Hollow resident Mark Cuban sold most of his shares in the Mavericks to the Adelson family for $3.5 billion in 2023. Before the Mavs fran- chise player Luka Doncic was shockingly traded to the Los Angeles Lakers, you could bet a lot of money on a Mavericks victory, and people did, just not in Texas. But when the Adel- sons invested, Dallasites hoped home victories might eventu- ally mean big payouts in new casinos too. Before the acquisition of the Mavs, the Adelson name wasn’t on the tip of the tongue of the average Dallas resident, but Republican lawmakers knew of the gambling magnates. Sheldon and Miriam Adelson elevated themselves to the highest ranks of political notoriety through frequent mil- Gambling from p4 Spencer Platt/Getty Images Gambling has brought an influx of cash to Biloxi, Miss. without many downsides, boosting education and safety.
