Boston Mayor Martin Walsh seems to have finally put his grandstanding aside and is making conciliatory noises about Wynn Resorts. Has the smackdown of his lawsuit against the Massachusetts Gaming 
Commission finally brought Walsh to his senses? Or is this another head-fake by the fractious Mayor McCheese? Boston Globe columnist Adrian Walker thinks it’s the former, given the $1 million already spent on litigation. Further appeals would be, he argues, “fiscally irresponsible.” That’s as may be but we haven’t known logic to slow Walsh down yet. If the lawsuit was intended as a shakedown of Steve Wynn for more money, it was an utter failure. Adds Walker, “it’s hard to see how this suit has strengthened the city’s hand in any way. Looking foolish is no way to gain leverage.”
Walker calls Walsh’s crusade against Wynn “an unwinnable war with no convincing rationale.” The mayor’s allies in organized labor and business, he adds, want an end to hostilities so that they can get on with building what will be a very lucrative project. Thanks to Rep. Michael Capuano, the Sullivan Square area will get $600 million a year in federal aid for its thorny traffic issues. That deus ex machina intervention may give Walsh just enough cover to climb down from the limb on which he finds himself.
* While Walsh is pondering his next move, the Massachusetts Gaming Commission has been informing itself on daily fantasy sports — and online poker. MGC Chairman Stephen Crosby proposes rolling the two together 
into an omnibus bill covering Internet gambling. “One thing a state cannot do is license a sports-gambling sports wagering scheme,” cautioned gaming attorney Daniel Wallach. But Crosby is not easily discouraged. “Would it make sense for the Legislature to try to craft an omnibus regulatory bill for all of these new electronic gaming technologies – because there’s so many of them? … maybe then they could give it to some agency to implement, and the agency does the grunt work every six months making it apply to whatever the new technology is,” he said.
Crosby’s proposed legislation would run a cart and horses through Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey‘s ongoing effort to set up a regulatory framework for DFS in the Bay State. According to USPoker.com, Crosby’s near-term goal is to craft “a white paper that would inform legislators on the industry and how it might best be handled by state government.” It’s more noteworthy for online-poker punters, as the MGC’s deliberations mark the first time that i-poker has come up for consideration in Massachusetts. This development comes as somewhat of a surprise, but it’s a step in the right direction.
Pennsylvania‘s Legislature — just when it looked like it might pull the trigger on Internet gambling — has drop-kicked the issue into the spring session. It looks as though lawmakers will be looking at it as a prop-up for the Keystone State’s pension fund.
* Five years of labor peace have been guaranteed at Detroit‘s casinos, now that a majority of 6,000 casino workers — represented by a quartet of unions — have ratified the new collective-bargaining agreement. It faced its toughest sell at MGM Grand Detroit, where 24% of workers held out for a better deal, while Greektown Casino & Hotel‘s labor force loved it, voting 95% in favor. MotorCity fell somewhere in between, with 85% voting to ratify.
* Westgate Las Vegas was the site of a Donald Trump-related incident that was apparently much too troubling (and troublesome) for our local papers to cover.
