NY’s Crashing Casinos

New York’s newest casinos are bringing in far less cash than expected, even as they eat into revenues for older gambling dens. It’s just the disappointment we always expected from Gov. Cuomo’s big bet on “gaming.”

Cuomo got voters to OK a constitutional amendment expanding casinos in 2013, aiming to bring jobs and tourists to economically distressed parts of the state.

But all three of the new gaming parlors are underperforming their projected revenues by 30 percent or more, even as some nearby “racinos” (slot machines at racetracks) have seen their own revenues sink.

And, though Cuomo once vowed that no taxpayer cash would go to support the industry, he and the Legislature this year handed $2 million in tax relief to rescue the floundering Vernon Downs racino.

Expect these woes to grow worse, since more casinos will soon open in Massachusetts, Connecticut and perhaps on Indian reservations here in New York.

Casinos were what the governor gave Upstate to make up for the hopes of economic growth that he dashed with his ban on fracking, which continues to deliver good jobs next door in Pennsylvania and across the nation.

Four years ago, Bob McManus wrote in these pages that the fundamental issue was “fake economic development vs. actual economic development.” Cuomo, he warned, was promoting the former because he lacked the “political courage to pursue the latter.”

Cuomo, worried about his left flank here at home and in a potential presidential run, put pandering to the greens ahead of the public interest.

Now his replacement policies — from gambling to the ailing “Buffalo Billion” investments — are coming up short.

The governor hopes to be remembered as a builder, but in much of New York his legacy will be communities hollowed out by lack of opportunity.