Labor Secretary Speaks to Jobs, Defends Casinos

By Jen Thomas - March 25, 2008
iBerkshires Staff

Labor Secretary Suzanne Bump

HANCOCK - Secretary of Labor and Workforce Development Suzanne Bump on Monday touted the Patrick administration's "multipronged" efforts to boost the state's economy

Speaking to the New England Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions at Jiminy Peak Mountain Resort, Bump said Gov. Deval Patrick and his administration are primarily concerned with supporting businesses, not controlling them.

"The governor starts with one very simple premise, and that is his understanding that government does not create jobs. You create jobs. But it is the role of government to support you in that task and to ensure that the current prosperity that he wants to bring is shared across the commonwealth," Bump said to the small group of trade association members. "He also knows that there is no one simple right way to do this, so his efforts have been multipronged."

Defending Patrick's casino gambling proposal (which was defeated in the House of Representatives last week) and his life sciences initiative, Bump's speech outlined some of the administration's goals and priorities, especially for the travel, tourism and recreational sectors.

"There's a big distinction between slot machines at race tracks and a destination resort casino. What the governor wanted to do was build on the very successful leisure and tourism industry we already have in the commonwealth," she said, noting that in 2006, 21 million tourists visited the state and tourism brought in $14 million to the economy that year.

Bump said the tourism industry - along with the creative economy - is a sector of the economy that is of particular interest to the governor. A lack of skilled workers for the state's 90,000 job vacancies is a real concern, considering that 125,000 residents are unemployed.

"There's a skills mismatch," she said.

To counter that problem, Bump suggested that her department intends to keep working on solutions that include the promotion of the state's 37 regional career centers, hosting job fairs and supporting the H2B visa program for seasonal or temporary workers.

But it's the "inevitability of casino gaming in Massachusetts" that had Bump excited.

"It was a proposal that I don't think was well appreciated by a number of members of the Legislature who felt that, because they had voted on slots at the tracks, they had already considered what the destination resort casinos would be," she said. "The governor wanted to take all the possibilities that we have for tourism development and work that into a proposal for destination resort casinos. These were not going to be facilities that were going to put slot machines into a cinderblock building that you could throw up in a few weeks time."

"The governor had in mind a much grander vision of restaurants and entertainment venues and golf and other recreational facilities," she said.

During a question-and-answer session after her speech, Bump said the Legislature voted down the casino proposal because lawmakers felt the governor's numbers about projected revenue didn't add up and because they were concerned about "changing the cultural atmosphere of the state."

(Among those voting against the bill was Rep. Daniel E. Bosley, D-North Adams, a harsh critic of casino gambling and House chairman of the Joint Committee on Economic Development that recommended against the measure.)

"Since we're talking about destination resort casinos that we envisioned tying in with cultural attractions and creating a family atmosphere and encouraging more people to come to the state and limiting the number to three, the governor didn't feel this was going to have a deleterious effect on the culture of the commonwealth," she said.

While Bump did admit that some studies have shown that small businesses are negatively impacted by casinos, she said the public's desire for more leisure activities would help boost the economy overall.