Casino News Source:
http://www.courierpostonline.com
Everyone happy? You bet, in A.C.
By TIM ZATZARINY JR.
Courier-Post Staff
ATLANTIC CITY
Melvin Blount looked skyward and smiled.
He liked what he saw.
People.
Customers slowly trickling back into Caesars casino-hotel three days after a state budget deadlock closed casino floors and kept gamblers away.
After Corzine lifted his shutdown order early Saturday, gambling resumed around 7:30 a.m.
Blount operates a hot dog cart outside Caesars with a view of the pedestrian bridge connecting the casino and its parking garage.
"It looks good, very good," said Blount, 63, a city resident.
In a good week, Blount can make $300 to $400. But, he said, his business was down by 80 percent since Wednesday, when the casino floors shut down.
"I never heard anybody say they're losing money and then stop everybody from working," Blount said of the state's decision to halt gambling in the city. "It's money they'll never get back. It's gone."
The city's 12 casino-hotels ceased gambling operations Wednesday morning, for the first time since legalized gambling came to the city in 1978.
When Gov. Jon S. Corzine shut down state government, state inspectors at the casinos were among the 45,000 workers furloughed.
When the casinos were forced to close, roughly 36,000 dealers, pit bosses, cocktail servers and food service workers were temporarily out of work.
By early afternoon, some visitors were still asking whether the casinos were back in business. Rows of vacant slot machines blinked on Caesars' floor, waiting for customers to fill them up.
Mike Pehonich, 46, of Scranton, Pa., came to the casino by bus on Saturday.
Up until Friday night, a trip sponsored by his church remained in limbo.
"We'd already paid for it, and we didn't know if we were coming or not," Pehonich said.
He said he was glad the casino were open for gambling but angry over the reason they closed in the first place.
"To shut them down and take money away from employees, it's just an unfair situation all the way around," he said. "It's not fair to the working man."
Casino executives were furious over the closings, which cost the state $1.3 million a day in tax revenues. The casinos, which take in $5 billion a year, lost about $18 million a day while they were shuttered, and employees lost pay that won't be made up.
Resolving the budget stalemate saved the weekend for three generations of the Seitz family.
Ruth Seitz, 46, of Robbinsville, Mercer County, brought her mother, sister and niece, who traveled from Gaithersburg, Md., to the casino.
"This was our big girls' weekend, and we're very happy it worked out," she said.
As her mother, Beverly Seitz, fed quarters into a slot machine, Ruth Seitz said the state shutdown and the attention it drew may have an unexpected result.
"I really think this is going to change the future of elections," she said, "because people are a lot more educated on government."
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