THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

Massachusetts has passed a law allowing up to three casinos in the Commonwealth. Before the ink was dry on the bill the big casino companies were prowling around for site to make $Millions from the suckers, and you can be assured that wealth won't be held in common. The thought of all their gamblers going to Massachusetts has the neighboring states making their own plans.

Under the Massachusetts law, which allows for three casinos to be built in three different regions, the state will pocket 25 percent of the gambling proceeds, plus 40 percent of the proceeds from a separate slot parlor that it will also allow. It is a potential bonanza that, combined with thousands of promised jobs, has much of New England poised to cast aside Yankee restraint and follow suit.

In New Hampshire, which dreads losing tourism money to Massachusetts, lawmakers are considering a bill that would allow up to four casinos there.

Maine just granted its first casino license to a six-year-old Bangor slot parlor that will add table games next month, and a second casino is expected to open in Oxford this year. Both are the result of voter referendums. Rhode Island, which already has two slot parlors, will hold a referendum in November on whether to allow table games at one of them.

In Connecticut, the two Indian tribes that have exclusive rights to offer casino gambling, at Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun, are now worried about losing patrons to Massachusetts. The Mohegan tribe is hoping to win one of the Massachusetts casino licenses and open a Mohegan Sun location in Palmer, a town of 12,750, which borders Brimfield.

The region’s compact size makes the threat of losing money to gambling enterprises in neighboring states all the bigger, said Clyde Barrow, a professor at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, who studies gambling laws. “They already have people leaving to gamble,” he said of other New England states. “They can continue watching those jobs and revenues leave their state or pass gambling legislation to keep them.”

As usual with these endeavors, the showers of gold upon all the good people will never come close to materializing. However if you plan on fighting the casino companies be prepared to fight hard and dirty. The profits are so good they will kill before they give up.