Money Quote by Tina Thompson

That clean, civic-minded praise of casinos is doing double duty: it’s a thank-you note to a revenue stream and a preemptive defense against the moral hangover that often follows gambling expansion. Thompson frames casinos as an infrastructure project, not a vice. “Revenue and jobs” is the political safe pair of hands, the language of ribbon cuttings and grant announcements. It signals: whatever you think about the slot machines, the balance sheet looks good.

The subtext is a negotiation with skepticism. Casino talk almost always arrives with an asterisk: addiction, predatory lending-by-roulette, crime anxieties, families stretched thin. Thompson doesn’t deny any of that; she simply refuses to grant it airtime. Instead she invokes “our community,” a phrase that turns a contested industry into a shared beneficiary. The move is subtle but strategic: if the money is already flowing to schools, roads, and services, opposing the casinos starts to sound like opposing the community itself.

“Those tax dollars” is the quote’s quiet kicker. It’s not just income, it’s legitimized income, redistributed through the state’s most respectable mechanism. That phrasing also hints at dependency: when public budgets get patched with casino taxes, the policy conversation shifts from “Should we have this?” to “Can we afford not to?” The intent, then, is less celebration than stabilization - to normalize an arrangement and make it feel like prudent governance, not a gamble.