I’ve been meaning to comment on this Globe article:

First of all, the possibility of sovereign lands is slim at this point and the possibility of tribal casinos even slimmer. I also have major issue with the way licensing fees are structured in the casino bills that have been floated so far. They mostly call for fairly large initial licensing fees – on the order of a couple of hundred million dollars – followed by renewal fees that are quite small. That gives the state an artificial one-time infusion of cash, that will get squandered and create budget crisis the following year when it disappears.
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The solution is simple. If the indian-casino factor is making it difficult to calculated license fees, change the fee from a one-time bulk payment to a yearly fee that can be raised or lowered depending on market factors. In the extremely unlikely event that we ever have sovereign indian casinos, the license fees can be lowered dramatically and issued to more facilities saturating the market.
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It’s rather disheartening to see the state so uninformed on the indian casino factor. It is also annoying to see the mindless chanting of the casino mantra of jobs, jobs, jobs, recapture, jobs, jobs. Massachusetts is pulling a Middleboro – an uniformed rush job.