Paul Bass Photo
Hill restaurateur Miguel Pittman wants to keep Keno out of the Hill.
Keno hasn’t arrived in New Haven’s restaurants yet — but it has landed in the hotly contested race for mayor, with one candidate accusing another of sneaking a “crack”-like form of gambling into the city.
Democratic mayoral hopeful Henry Fernandez made that accusation at a press conference Monday morning outside Sandra’s Next Generation soul food restaurant at the corner of Congress Avenue and Arch Street.
It was Fernandez’s second Keno-related press conference in two weeks. On June 18 he stood outside Sports Haven to decry a provision slipped into the new state budget, without any public discussion, that will allow hundreds of Connecticut restaurants and bars (as well as betting parlors like Sports Haven) to start offering Keno alongside the lottery. Keno, called the “crack cocaine” of electronic gambling because of its alleged quick addictive potential, is a bingo-like electronic game that allows players to keep playing anew every five or six minutes. Until now, you had to drive to a casino to play Keno in Connecticut. Fernandez argued that Keno’s spread will hurt the poor by sparking new gambling addictions in New Haven; he blamed state Sen. Toni Harp — another candidate for mayor — for negotiating the budget deal containing Keno.
Fernandez (pictured) upped the ante Monday morning. He announced a new “Kids not Keno” campaign. He urged people to sign this petition to halt the expansion of Keno and require local approvals of any new gambling plans in the future. He brought two statewide anti-problem-gambling advocates to decry Keno. And he took direct aim at Harp for striking a “backroom deal on gambling.”
As co-chair of the legislature’s Appropriations Committee, Harp “negotiated the budget deal that included Keno” without public debate, Fernandez declared. “She led the effort to turn New Haven’s restaurants into gambling halls.”
Fernandez said he does not relish the prospect of breakfasts out with his 8‑year-old son at restaurants with Keno machines.
“I would fight the introduction of Keno even if I was not running for mayor,” Fernandez said. “It is wrong to bring Keno into our neighborhoods. … We need a mayor who supports kids, not Keno.”
Harp responded by saying Fernandez is making a “specious argument.”
Surrounding states already have Keno, she said. Connecticut already has legalized gambling. “There are some people who have addictive personalities and may have a problem. If they do have a problem, they’ve already” developed it through Connecticut’s lottery or through “ready access to the casinos,” she argued. “Anybody who’s going to have a gambling problem already has it.”
She said the budget directed money to the Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services to help problem gamblers. (The decision to divert $400,000 in lottery revenue to the “Chronic Gamblers Account” was made by the legislature’s Finance Committee after the budget passed.)
Thomas MacMillan Photo
“Keno is an electrified multiple-layered bingo. I don’t know why he feels it’s more addictive than playing the lottery or going to the casinos or the video horse races,” said Harp (pictured). “He can’t show us any studies showing it is any worse” than other forms of gambling.
Bingo games already take place in church halls without apparent problems, Harp added.
In Keno, “players win prizes by correctly guessing some of the numbers generated by a central computer system using a random number generator, rabbit ear, or a wheel system device using numbered balls,” according to a state legislative analysis. Players pick numbers, often based on a birthday or anniversary; then the system selects 20 out of 80 numbers.
At Fernandez’s press conference, Mary Drexler (pictured), executive director of the Connecticut Council on Problem Gambling, cited research by Rachel Volberg of the University of Massachusetts reporting a more addictive effect of Keno on people in other states. In Massachusetts, young Latino women emerged as the most likely to get hooked on the game, Drexler said.
She argued that Keno is qualitatively different from other existing forms of legalized gambling in the state. It’s easier to get to than a casino, and the games can be repeated so quickly, she said. Also, kids will come into contact with it more when it comes to local restaurants, she said; studies show that young people who start gambling earlier in life are more likely to develop an addiction.
“How much gambling is too much?” Drexler asked. She noted that the public has been clear in public-opinion polls (see Question 31) that it didn’t want Keno expanded.
Miguel Pittman, co-owner of Standra’s Next Generation, already had a sign on the side of his building declaring the corner a “drug-free zone.” He put up a new “Kids not Keno” sign on the same wall (pictured at the top of the story) after Monday’s press conference.
“Many people work every day to make Congress Avenue a thriving, drug-free place,” Pittman said. “Crack Keno” would work like drugs on the neighborhood, he predicted: “It would create crime and make our streets less safe.”
The Keno provision plugged a $30 million hole in the state’s newly passed $37.6 billion two-year budget.
State Senate Majority Leader Marty Looney of New Haven, another target of criticism at Fernandez’s press conference, argued Monday that cuts to human services and education would have caused greater harm had the Keno expansion not been added to the budget.
Keno was operating all around us anyway. It’s part of the legal gambling efforts underway in so many states.
“If people are responsible and apportion their spending wisely, they won’t spend a lot on Keno,” Looney said. “It’s all around us in the world. Constantly you’re balancing options.”