This is a long video, but engaging and worth watching. It focuses to some extent on the impacts of gambling when it is placed near residential areas, but it is full of information relevant to any casino application in North America.

https://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5340854873840831873

Bob Goodman is a Professor of Economic Development, Urban Planning and Environmental Design at Amherst in Massachussetts. He was retained in the early 90s by the Ford Foundation to carry out a study of the economic costs and benefits of legalized gambling. The original study was done for local governments who were trying to decide whether to allow gambling expansion. He has produced a number of major studies and economic analyses of gambling expansion throughout the 1990s and 2000s, and has been hired by both Democrat and Republican administrations and sat on numerous federal committees.

The video of Goodman was is from a 2008 public hearing for a proposed gambling expansion in Philadelphia. His study of over 200 towns has shown that with very few exceptions the introduction of gambling has had serious adverse affects on business and local economies.

It should be noted that Goodman comes from a union family and has a strong concern for jobs (he’s currently working on the job crisis in Detroit). He makes clear that he has no moral objections to gambling, and confesses that he gambles a little himself and has played in poker tournaments.

Click here for a summary of his report Legalized Gambling: Public Policy and Economic Development Issues (pdf). It summarizes his testimony before Congress and was published in the Fall 1995 edition of Economic Development Review.