Back in the early 1990s, an event occurred that changed our state forever. A bill allowing “dockside gaming” was passed. This bill was loosely written, and I think most folks thought it was set up where they would bring boats in, and these boats would sail off and the gaming would be held on the rivers and Mississippi Sound. Those folks were wrong. The “boats,” as they are lovingly called, are nothing more than rebuilt cargo barges with a Las Vegas casino on top of them. They disguise this on the Coast by building huge hotels along with them-you don’t even know you are on the water when you are in them. Of course gaming brings in new tourists, who, it seems, are retired people bused in by the hundreds like cattle for the casinos’ “weekend deals.” I will tell you firsthand that the casinos have changed the landscape of the Mississippi Gulf Coast and Mississippi in general, both for better and worse.
When a casino opens up, it is like a gold mine for the community it plants its roots into. Thousands of jobs open up directly and indirectly related to the casino. Most of the economic boom due to casino development is the small business it creates and the big business it brought in. In 1990, we did not know what a big office supply store was on the Coast, now we have several Office Depot and Office Max stores, and a new Best Buy was proposed. Edgewater Mall was on the verge of bankruptcy, now two huge outlet malls have been built next door to each other and scores of Wal-Mart Super Centers are popping up in places that, 10 years ago, had only a convenience store or a small grocery store.
When I started high school at Hancock High in 1990, the junior and senior high school for the nonmunicipal county was housed in a new building with room to spare, and the old elementary/high school combination built in the 1950s became a large elementary school. Now the county has grown to need a new middle school and elementary school, both of which are almost at capacity. The Hancock County school district office was forced to move from the Stennis International Airport space it had rented for 15 years because it was actually the terminal, and the casinos started flying people into it rather than Gulfport/Biloxi regional airport, another business close to bankruptcy, because it obtained a new carrier, Air Tran and was at capacity itself.
Education was the forefront for pro-casino arguments back in 1990, but unfortunately, state schools in general have not seen any benefits from the gaming initiative. City schools fair well since the cities directly tax the casinos. Teachers in Bay St. Louis make on average $2,500 more than the teachers at county schools. Most of the funds that go to the state of Mississippi go into the general fund, where greedy lawmakers have at it. The new road projects needed to support casino visitors have been a big slice of the gaming-tax pie. Gaming is a long-term investment and large amounts of capital will have to be contributed by the taxpayers of Mississippi before the state makes any profits.
Gaming has always occurred, legally or not, on the Coast. The culture is the oldest in the state and is predominately Catholic. There has always been an imaginary religious border between the Coast-Hancock, Harrison, and Jackson counties-and the rest of the state. There always has been and always will be moral conflict between these religions and gaming has done nothing but fuel the flame. Bingo halls were a big fight in the past, but that issue is minuscule now. North Mississippi lawmakers are Bible thumpers and always chant the war cry when it comes to gaming, but when they see the state’s balance sheets, their cries turn into whimpers. I am a Baptist myself, and some of the hypocrisy I see in certain sects of the Baptist religion, especially the Southern Baptist Convention, makes me uneasy. I guess that’s why I have not found a church I am comfortable with in Starkville. The First Baptist Church of Biloxi had a beautiful old building down on the beach. People in my community would leave their own churches to be married in it. A casino moved close by, and the church kept shouting, “We won’t move,” but the deacons and pastor cut a deal and got them a new church on Interstate 10 with a few million in the bank and no telling how much in people’s pockets. Now that beautiful building, to my last knowledge, is vacant, and plans for some economic development are being discussed.
Not until I took an engineering statistics class did I realize how futile gambling is. I will be the first to admit, it almost got me. I won $500 the first time I went to a casino, on my 21st birthday. I played every week and cringed at the money I lost and what I could have done with it. I have seen gaming ruin many lives. My grandfather ran a gambling hall back in the early 1900s. All of my extended family are gamblers, and some are addicted to it. It saddens me. The only people who seem to get ahead and win are the out-of-towners.
The gaming industry has also brought in the riff-raff. In my community the popular thing to do is to set up “Section 8” housing-old mobile homes that are barely livable. What was at one time a beautiful location for a new Catholic has become lined with junk trailers and cars up on blocks. These places breed drug addicts, meth labs and teen-age mothers. I want them gone, but you can’t tell a man what to do with his own property unless the property has zoning requirements, which we just recently obtained.
I see the good and the bad it has caused, and I think it will balance in the near future. Tourism has always been the lifeblood of the Coast and what was once dying cannot seem to quit growing. The casino industry boasted its record revenue last month-$100 million. With that kind of revenue what can you do? They are here to stay, and we will have to learn to live with them.