Gambling foes organize statewide ballot initiative to repeal casino law

By Liz Kowalczyk, Globe Staff

FRAMINGHAM -- Gambling opponents from across Massachusetts mapped out plans in a church basement today to repeal the 2011 state law allowing resort casinos.

The first significant step for the group is to gather more than 70,000 signatures from registered voters by late November of this year. If the signature drive is successful, they likely will ask voters to repeal the casino law in a statewide ballot question in November 2014.

The anti-casino group, which calls itself Repeal the Casino Deal, includes activists who are fighting specific casinos in their own communities, as well as a national anti-government-sponsored gambling organization called Stop Predatory Gambling, a former state senator, and a Hampshire College architecture professor who wrote a book on gambling in the United States.

“This was rammed through without a democratic process,’’ Robert Goodman, author of The Luck Business: The Devastating Consequences and Broken Promises of American’s Gambling Explosion, said of the state law during Saturday’s strategy session. “Whether you are for it or against it, let’s get it on the ballot.’’