Penn National moving ahead with $225M slot parlor

PLAINVILLE, Mass. -- Plans to open the state's first slot parlor are moving forward at a harness racing track near the Rhode Island state line despite a vote in three months on whether to repeal Massachusetts' 2011 casino law, which made the project possible.

Penn National Gaming won the state's first gambling license for a proposed slot parlor at the Plainridge Racecourse in February and officially broke ground on the $225 million project in March. A construction crew of about 200 is working on the 100-acre property.

The parlor is being built beside the racetrack's current clubhouse and simulcast betting facility. It will feature about 1,250 slot machines as well as video poker and video blackjack terminals.

Jay Snowden, Penn National's chief operating officer, said the company is moving forward with its plans despite the November vote.

"It's a risk, but it's a calculated risk," he said on a recent site visit with company officials, local politicians and labor union leaders. "We're confident we'll prevail in November."

In the coming weeks, the Wyomissing, Pennsylvania-based company will begin taking applications for about 500 permanent jobs at the casino. By November, it expects to have spent more than $100 million on the project and to have the exterior construction finished. The facility, which will be called Plainridge Park Casino, is set to open next June.

Darek Barcikowski, campaign manager for the anti-casino "Repeal the Casino Deal" group, said Penn National is overconfident. He noted that other gambling operators — notably MGM Resorts International, which was granted a casino license for its $800 million Springfield development — have chosen to wait out the November vote before breaking ground.

Casino supporters, however, see the construction activity at Plainridge as a critical piece in the run-up to November, providing voters a tangible example of the casino law's economic potential.

"As we head toward November, people will be able to see a symbolic representation of exactly what this particular industry can bring to Massachusetts," said Senate Minority Whip Richard Ross, a Wrentham Republican. "People should get excited. The economic development here is real."

Labor unions representing some construction workers on the site promise to hammer home that economic development message to voters in the weeks and months ahead.

"When you bring organized labor into a political fight, it's about troops on the ground," said David Fenton, business manager for the Local 223 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.

Penn National, meanwhile, has joined with MGM and Mohegan Sun, which is seeking a casino license to open a $1.3 billion resort outside Boston, to finance a recently formed political organization to defeat the ballot question.

It's called the Committee to Preserve Jobs Associated with Casino Gaming Law.

Plainville Town Administrator Joseph Fernandes applauds the company for moving forward with the project despite the uncertainty.

The town, which has just over 8,000 residents, stands to earn at least $1.5 million in annual property taxes from the slot parlor project, as well as roughly $2 million to $3 million a year in gambling profits through an agreement with Penn National that local voters overwhelmingly approved. That revenue, Fernandes said, will help pay for capital projects, such as a new town hall and public safety complex without burdening taxpayers.

"There's an awful lot at stake. I'm about as nervous as a cat in a roomful of rocking chairs on this thing," he said. "We're looking at getting a huge chunk of change for very little impact on (public) services."

Flame from Emirates plane put out at Boston

BOSTON -- A Dubai-to-Boston flight with 367 passengers and crew members aboard has been grounded at Logan International Airport after an engine fire that officials say was quickly extinguished when the plane landed.

Massport said a flame was seen coming from an engine of the Emirates Boeing 777-300 after it landed at 2 p.m. Sunday on its flight from the United Arab Emirates.

The fire was put out and the plane was towed to the gate, where the 349 passengers disembarked.

Flight 237 also carried 18 crew members.

EXCHANGE: Finances key to post-recession couples

SYCAMORE, Ill. -- When Brittani Click first met her fiancé, Matt Holliday, she wouldn't have called herself a responsible saver.

But after frequent financial talks and with a little less than two months left to go before saying "I do," Click has learned from her future husband's frugal ways.

"He's very responsible in a way that's made me responsible," said Click, 21.

The best way not to get caught in a financial tangle that can doom a relationship is to talk about finances before and throughout a marriage, local couples and experts say. Although most couples talk about finances monthly and almost all of them consider financial compatibility before tying the knot, a recent study shows those married after the 2008 recession were even more likely to consider finances before saying "I do."

Click and Holliday, 24, of Sycamore, started talking about money early on in their 14-month relationship. But it wasn't until six months ago when they really started to get into the details of each other's books.

"We actually talk about finances a lot," Click said. "But the most stressful thing is paying for the wedding."

The couple is like a majority of couples married after 2008, according to an Experian Consumer Survey of 1,000 married adults. Of post-recession couples, 82 percent said they talked to their spouse about finances before tying the knot, compared with 65 percent of pre-recession couples.

Click, a financial services officer at Illinois Community Credit Union and Holliday, a parts advisor for auto dealer Brian Bemis, want to stop renting and buy a house. With that goal in mind, they often consult each other before making big purchases, such as equipment for their hunting hobby. And that's where the couple bucks the trend.

Men included in the study said they would spend $1,231 before consulting their spouse, three times the $396 women said they would spend before asking their sweetheart. Click said they have a $100 threshold.

Looking at finances before taking a trip down the aisle comes recommended by lawyer Matt Shaw, who's handled thousands of family law cases.

"I suppose that pre-marital counseling on finances would be a good idea for anyone," Shaw said. "It's no guarantee that the relationship will work, but good financial awareness and habits make for a better life in either instance."

Shaw, a founding partner of St. Charles-based Shaw, Jacobs and Associates P.C, sees money as a potential catalyst for divorce in extreme situations, such as one spouse having a lengthy bout of unemployment or a severe gambling problem.

"I think the relationship problems are the cause of the divorce, and the money issues can be a precipitating factor," Shaw said. "Or, once a party has decided the relationship is untenable, attention turns to finances."

Love might have brought Earl and Stacy Gable together, but being on the same page with money is the thing that keeps them from falling apart.

"It's not me against her, it's us against it," said Earl Gable, 46, of Sycamore. "We're on the same team."

Unlike many 35 percent of couples in the survey married before 2008, money has always been an open topic for the Gables, who were married 14 years ago.

But that's not to say those conversations didn't change after the recession.

Earl was laid off from a job where he earned more than $200,000 a year and turned to medical transcription services. Now, between his income and what Stacy earns as a counter manager for Lancome at the Oak Brook Terrace Mall, the couple brings in about $55,000 a year.

After bills and mortgage, car and student loan payments, the Gables have about $500 left over monthly, which they're eager to save in case of an emergency in their family of six.

"We've had times where it's very close, paycheck to paycheck," Earl said. "But as long as you're on the same page, it doesn't come between us."

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Source: The (DeKalb) Daily Chronicle, http://bit.ly/1nSCXFs

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Information from: The Daily Chronicle, http://bit.ly/1nEnsLA

This is an Illinois Exchange story offerec by The (DeKalb) Daily Chronicle.

End of watering season near Las Cruces approaches

LAS CRUCES, N.M. -- The Rio Grande will soon dry up near Las Cruces with the approaching end of watering season, whose releases some farmers called inadequate.

Three irrigation districts that rely on the river have shut off water for the year, The Las Cruces Sun-News reported Saturday (http://bit.ly/1oBqIrg ). In less than two weeks, the river will go dry until farmers get their next irrigation allotments, likely in spring 2015.

The Elephant Butte Irrigation District ended its season July 31, while a Mexican irrigation district wrapped up its watering year Thursday. But some Rio Grande water bound for farmers in a neighboring district in Texas will continue flowing through Dona Ana County until Aug. 22.

This year's water allotment improved slightly compared with last year but reflected an ongoing drought, Elephant Butte Irrigation District officials said.

Some farmers have said they are unhappy with the levels in recent years, especially because they must pay district fees no matter how much water they receive. Some said they had to reduce acreage or have lost crops to drought.

"It was extremely unsatisfactory — the amount of water we got," said Las Cruces-area pecan farmer Les Fletcher.

Groundwater pumping helped many Mesilla Valley and Hatch-area growers get by.

Gary Esslinger of the Elephant Butte Irrigation District said it stopped taking water from the river by July 29, but runoff allowed the district to reopen briefly.

"We were able to stretch it a little bit farther because the monsoon kicked in," he said.

The El Nino weather pattern in the Pacific Ocean has increased the chance for more late-summer rainfall than usual, forecasters say. That usually means more precipitation for the Southwest.

Wyoming consumer spending growth in 2012 is lowest

CHEYENNE, Wyo. -- Wyoming recorded the lowest growth in consumer spending in the nation between 2011 and 2012, but residents don't appear to be cutting back on buying gasoline for their vehicles.

"Our population density is lower than any other state except Alaska — a lot of room and just a few people," state economist David Bullard said. "So the gasoline would make sense to me."

A report released last week by the U.S. Department of Commerce shows Wyoming's per capita spending was $36,891 in 2012, the latest year for which figures are available.

Consumer spending in Wyoming in 2012 was just 1.4 percent higher than the previous year, the lowest percentage increase in the nation, the report said. The U.S. average was a 3.3 percent boost from 2011.

Bullard, a senior economist with the Wyoming Department of Workforce Services, said the state struggled with job growth in 2012.

"The first quarter of 2012 we were adding jobs at a 2.5 percent annual rate. By the end of the year, it was 0.3 percent," he said. "So the job growth really slowed during the course of 2012. And so fewer jobs would likely result in less spending."

Job growth improved only slightly in 2013, to about 0.5 percent, but picked up to 1.1 percent in the first quarter of this year, Bullard said.

Despite the tepid consumer spending in Wyoming, per capita spending on gasoline and energy in the state was $3,475 in 2012, second only to North Dakota's $3,916, according to the federal report.

Wyoming has among the cheapest electricity prices in the nation, so much of the spending likely is for gasoline, Bullard said.

"The population centers are pretty widely dispersed around the state," Bullard said. "In some of our neighboring states, well over half the population is in one metro area. And we don't have anything like that. Our population is really spread out."

Volkswagen recalls some Tiguans

NEW YORK -- Volkswagen of America is recalling 151,389 Tiguan SUVs due to the possibility of stalling.

No accidents or injuries have been reported. The problem is with fuel pumps on some models from 2009 to 2014. Gas bubbles may form in the fuel system when winterized fuel is used in warmer months or warmer areas, which could lead to the car stalling.

Volkswagen is notifying all owners of the vehicles about the recall. Dealers are installing revised software in the cars to fix this issue.

Debate over Redskins name more intense that ever

WASHINGTON -- Mark Moseley has been associated with the Washington Redskins for some four decades as a league MVP kicker, member of a Super Bowl-winning team and general ambassador in his work with the franchise's alumni association. He's seen the debate over the team's nickname come and go since the 1970s, usually as a flash-in-the-pan topic that disappears after a day or so.

This time is different. The campaign to ditch "Redskins" by those who consider it a racial slur has reached unprecedented momentum over the last 18 months. "We all thought it would just go away," Moseley said. "Because it is such a ridiculous subject."

Moseley concedes that the debate shows no signs of abating, and he's recently become more active in supporting team owner Dan Snyder's quest to keep the name. Both sides are digging in, the words are getting nastier, and there's no real possibility of compromise: Either the name stays or it goes.

Theories abound as to why Snyder is on the defensive like never before.

"Politicians," said Joe Theismann, Washington's Super Bowl-winning quarterback in the 1982 season and another supporter of the name. "It's an election year."

Possible Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has called it "insensitive." Fifty Democratic senators equated the name to "racism and bigotry." Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley, who is mulling a run for president, said it is "probably time" for the name to change. President Barack Obama said he would "think about changing" the name if he owned the team.

But the politicians were late-comers. A confluence of events — and several missteps by Snyder and his organization — has made the issue a topic du jour.

It started with a February 2013 symposium on mascot history at the Smithsonian that left a 20-year-old Redskins fan so embarrassed that he took over his team gear and said: "I really don't feel right wearing this stuff now."

That was soon followed by the latest hearing in a long-running case brought by a group of Native Americans intent on stripping the team of its trademark protection — the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office eventually ruled against the Redskins, but the case will likely be tied up in the courts for years. Then, last spring, the opposition got an unexpected boost from Snyder himself. The owner has always vowed never to change the name, but he came across as especially strident when he told USA Today: "We'll never change the name. It's that simple. NEVER — you can use caps."

Soon, the Oneida Indian Nation in New York had joined the fray as a major player, buying television and radio ads in major markets — including one that ran during the NBA finals. Now, every time the team does anything to promote the name, Oneida counters with a news release within minutes. The anti-"Redskins" coalition never had an ally like it.

"They really put a lot of effort and personal time — and the important thing, money — into what we were doing," said Suzan Shown Harjo, a longtime lead figure in the trademark case. "We've never had money before. We've always done this on a wing and a prayer."

When Snyder started an Original Americans Foundation to give financial support to Native American tribes, Harjo called it "somewhere between a PR assault and bribery." When a major sector of the United Church of Christ was preparing a vote to boycott the Redskins, the team tried to make its case by having three self-identified members of the Blackfeet Nation call church leader Rev. John Deckenback on the phone, but Deckenback said the three didn't really push the team's cause and called the interaction a "somewhat weird experience."

A blogger hired by the Redskins to defend the team's name quit after two weeks. The team tried to make it a big deal when a self-proclaimed Native American in favor of the name arrived two weeks ago at training camp, giving him a VIP pass and making him available to the media, but the man was a D.C.-area native who couldn't spell the name of the tribe he said he was representing. When the team unveiled a "Redskins Facts" website aimed at boosting support for the name, The Washington Post examined the "facts" as presented and awarded the team a score of Three Pinocchios for leaving a "false impression."

On his Redskins-owned radio station, ESPN 980, Snyder last week derided the "fun, chit-chat, cocktail talk about the name" and said detractors should be focusing more on the plight of Native Americans. His opponents point out that Snyder paid no heed to Native issues during his first 14 years as an owner and made it a focus only after the name debate swelled late last year.

"Dan Snyder's comments are proof that he is living in a bigoted billionaire bubble," was the Oneida Nation's predictably swift response. "For him to claim that a racial slur is 'fun' is grotesque."

Opponents see the rising opposition as part of a constant drip, drip, drip of anti-Redskins sentiment they hope will prevail.

"We're in this until the name changes," Oneida representative Ray Halbritter said.

Such inevitability is not felt in the Snyder camp.

"I'm telling you," Moseley said, "somebody would have to drop a bomb on FedEx Field to get us to change."

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AP NFL websites: www.pro32.ap.org and http://bit.ly/1f8IcYq

Farms are focus of studies on drinking water toxin

TOLEDO, Ohio -- Scientists and farmers agree that phosphorus from agriculture runoff is feeding the blue-green algae blooms on Lake Erie linked to a toxin found in the drinking water of 400,000 people in Ohio and southeastern Michigan last week.

Ohio's political leaders are calling for more studies to find out why the blooms are increasing and how to control them. A number of environmental groups say it's time for strict regulations on the agriculture industry.

But how much of a role do the farms play? Researchers already know some of the answers, yet there are still many unknowns.

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THE SOURCES

The debate over the algae blooms that produce the toxins found in Toledo's water starts with what is causing them.

Scientists say climate change has brought on more heavy spring rains that are washing fertilizers off farm fields and lawns and causing sewer overflows in cities. All of those combine to dump more phosphorus in the rivers and streams that flow into the lake.

At the same time, scientists believe invasive zebra mussels in Lake Erie have disrupted the food chain so much that it has helped the algae flourish.

Then there is the question of where all the phosphorus is coming from. It's found in farm fertilizers, livestock manure and raw sewage.

The Ohio Phosphorus Task Force — a group in Ohio representing the agriculture industry, environmental researchers and state regulators — concluded nearly two years ago that agriculture was the leading source of the phosphorus. Some researchers say it's as much as two-thirds from agriculture.

That's mainly because half the phosphorus in the lake comes down the Maumee River, which drains 3 million acres of farmland before flowing through Toledo and into the lake — not far from where last week's algae bloom overwhelmed Toledo's water intake.

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THE UNKNOWNS

While it's now widely accepted that much of the phosphorus is coming from farmland, what's much more difficult to pin down is exactly where and why.

There's an assumption that farmers are simply overfertilizing their fields. Soil tests have shown that about 30 percent of fields have more phosphorus than they need. Cutting down on fertilizing that land would help with the problem.

But industry sales figures also show that farmers are using much less fertilizer because of advanced technology that allows them to apply it just where it's needed. The amount of phosphorus fertilizer sold in Ohio in 2011 was less than half that sold in the mid-1990s.

Another assumption is that the main source of phosphorus is the manure produced by large livestock operations and megadairies, which have increased dramatically over the past two decades along with the algae blooms.

But there's not enough monitoring right now to know if those megafarms are the culprit, researchers say. "Without soil tests it's totally impossible to determine," said Jeff Reutter, head of the Ohio Sea Grant research lab.

Less than 20 percent of all the agriculture-related phosphorus in western Lake Erie comes from livestock manure while 80 percent is from commercial fertilizer, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Natural Resource Conservation Service.

What isn't known is how many of those livestock farms are contributing to the phosphorus problem by spreading manure onto frozen and snow-covered fields in the winter, allowing the phosphorus to wash away and end up in the lake.

The USDA recommends against putting manure on frozen ground. "The extent of how often that happens is a great unknown," said Steve Davis, a watershed specialist in Ohio with the Natural Resource Conservation Service. "It's certainly one of the first things that should stop."

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THE SOLUTIONS

The only way to reduce phosphorus in the lake is to control runoff from all sources — farms, sewage systems and leaking septic tanks. Agriculture leaders within Ohio say they are committed to doing that and much research is underway to see what works best.

The farm industry is heavily promoting the idea of using the right amount of fertilizer at the right time and place. Ohio's biggest and most influential agriculture groups also are putting money into research on how to keep phosphorus on the fields.

Among the practices they are looking at are injecting fertilizer into the ground rather than spreading it in pellets on the fields and planting cover crops such as legumes to help soil absorb the phosphorus.

One other area being closely looked at is whether a move in the 1980s to reduce soil erosion by encouraging farmers not to heavily plow their fields has contributed to fertilizer runoff.

While researchers say these are all good ideas, it's not clear how effective they will be.

"That's where the questions still remain. What's going to work?" said Laura Johnston, a research scientist at the National Center for Water Quality Research at Heidelberg University in Ohio.