A striking contrast occurred at last Friday’s Town Hall in Irving, where more than 500 residents showed their opposition to the behemoth casino resort that the Las Vegas Sands Corp. is seeking to bring to Irving. A crucial step in bringing that casino a stone’s throw away from where our children live and go to school is an upcoming vote by the Irving City Council on whether to rezone the land formerly occupied by Texas Stadium for a casino resort.
After an hour of fielding angry question after question, the Sands’ spokesman asked from the mic for a member of his team to bring him some water. No one did. The questions continued. The Rev. John Bayer, a Cistercian monk and a member of the monastery that would be a neighbor to the casino resort, noticed the omission and brought him a glass of water. Despite his fervent opposition to the development, Father John recognized the human needs of that man, and in bringing him a glass of water, offered a small representation of what we believe Irving actually stands for. It’s the opposite of what the Sands Corp. plans to do to Irving.
We call on the Irving City Council to recognize the human needs of the community its members represent. We are deeply concerned that the casino will yield social ills without the economic benefits it supposedly promises. Irving residents need economic development that prioritizes the goods of the community: safety, good jobs, family-friendly gatherings, and excellent education, including the nationally recognized University of Dallas, where we teach in the shadow of the proposed casino site. This piece of land is an opportunity to augment, not diminish, Irving’s many virtues.
Yet casinos directly caused 8.6% of property crime and 12.5% of violent crime in counties where they operate, according to the most rigorous and comprehensive study on casinos and crime, conducted by economists Earl Grinols and David Mustard and published in The Review of Economics and Statistics. Their research examined a 19-year period when casino operations expanded from just one state (Nevada) to 29 states — making their findings directly relevant to Texas, which has potential casino gambling on its doorstep.
These crime increases included assault, rape, robbery, larceny, burglary and auto theft. Even more concerning, they found crime spilled beyond casino borders into neighboring counties, proving that what happens in casinos definitely doesn’t stay there and poses a direct threat to the families in our community.
A likely primary culprit behind these alarming statistics? Gambling addictions that progressively breed financial desperation and ultimately drive people to criminal behavior, argue the authors.
The authors use cutting-edge statistical methods, which compare counties that got casinos to non-casino counties with similar crime trends before the casinos were built (while also controlling for a wide range of other factors that could falsely attribute the rise in crime to casinos). This approach distinguishes between correlation and causation by comparing actual outcomes against what would have happened without casinos, ruling out alternative explanations like economically struggling areas choosing to build casinos. The casinos truly did cause increases in crime, and we should expect the same here.
At the March 14 town hall, the Sands spokesperson asserted that the proposed development would generate a large amount of economic activity and jobs. Yet such statements are deeply misleading, because unlike the rigorous studies we highlight in this article, the numbers conjectured by Sands count the dollars and jobs that would run through a casino and implicitly assume that no economic development would occur in its absence.
A study with similar scale and rigor to the one detailed above found that when you compare counties that got casinos to similar non-casino counties, casino employment benefits exist only in sparsely populated counties. For populous areas like Dallas-Fort Worth? Zero impact on jobs or earnings. D-FW is one of the most populous and fastest growing areas in the country. Claiming no alternative development would occur in this booming area isn’t just misleading — it’s a bluff that would redden the face of even the most stone-faced poker champion.
Sands’ promises of increased property tax revenue are another bad bet. While there might be modest increases in property tax revenue and the value of commercial real estate, any claim by Sands is surely vastly overstated due to the same misleading reasoning they engage in with other economic activity. History confirms this: Governments banking on casino revenue have consistently come up empty.
Casino gambling is illegal in the state of Texas, and research confirms that this is for good reason. It is not within the mandate of a municipal zoning commission to call that into question.
Naturally, we strongly support economic development in Irving and throughout the D-FW area. Our growing, welcoming community offers abundant opportunities for businesses to thrive. We simply advocate for development aligned with our community’s core values — family-oriented enterprises that enhance rather than threaten public safety and overall well-being.
When the spokesman thanked him for the water, Father John responded, “Just to be clear: I am not on your team.” Yet, Irving is the type of place where we love our political opponents. We do not feel that reciprocal love from the Sands Corp. The needs of Irving are natural human needs for security, prosperity and well-being. Any player who wants things at odds with these needs, is indeed not playing on the same team.
John Soriano, Ph.D., is assistant professor of economics, and Chad Engelland, Ph.D., is professor of philosophy at the University of Dallas, which is adjacent to the site of the proposed casino. Both live with their families in south Irving.
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