http://www.villagevoice.com/2011-09-28/columns/casinos-head-to-nyc-you-lose/If the people weren't so old and shabby, they would look like a shift clocking in: streaming swiftly and silently past a few solitary smokers into the blank-faced, brick-walled, block-sized money factory, a continuous line of New Yorkers stepping off of buses in Yonkers. No lingering or idle talk, they go in ones and twos straight to the machines to begin the day's lever-pulling. It's depressing but crucial work: The state is banking on them, to the tune of a billion dollars a year and rising.
Back in August 2001, the Yonkers Raceway was for sale and expected to be converted to a mixed-use facility. It was revived in October, when, amid fears about how the 9/11 attack would impact New York's economy, Governor Pataki pushed through a law creating so-called "racinos" with electronic slot machines at race tracks across the state.
That is, the state decided to go into the gambling business for itself, contracting out the operations so it could "regulate" its own cash cow and chopping up the take with shares going to education, to the still-staggering racing industry, and, of course, to the casino operators.
Although the 2001 law paved the way for a racino at the Aqueduct Racetrack in Queens, it hardly registered in the city at large—even as it generated a wave of scandals as deep-pocketed, well-connected bidders paid off who they could for the lucrative right to play the house. Perhaps the story didn't play here because the money goes to the state, not the city, or because there's not much direct overlap between the Wall Street set and the bodega-lottery-ticket and casino-bus crowd.
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