Mashantucket-Mohegan Fund grants would more than double in 2025-26
Apr. 24—Municipalities' share of the gaming revenues the Mashantucket Pequot and Mohegan tribes pay the state would more than double under a bill advanced last week by the legislature's Appropriations Committee.
The panel voted unanimously to increase the amount transferred annually from the state's General Fund to the Mashantucket Pequot and Mohegan Fund ― starting with the 2025-26 fiscal year ― to $139,380,000. The money comes from the state's 25% share of the slot-machine revenue the tribes' respective casinos ― Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun ― generate.
In recent years, the fund has plateaued at $51.5 million.
The increase endorsed by the Appropriations Committee as part of Raised Bill No. 1213 would restore the fund to its highest level since the 1999-2000 fiscal year, when $135 million was distributed to the state's 169 cities and towns in the form of grants.
"We've been trying to build it back to what it was originally intended to be," state Sen. Cathy Osten, the Sprague Democrat who co-chairs the committee, said of the fund. "By 2025-26, most towns will have used up their ARPA (American Rescue Plan Act) funds, and the increase in the grants will help bridge the gap."
Osten has sought to increase the grants since before the state's 2021 legalization of online casino gaming and sports betting, forms of gambling that have generated additional revenues for the tribes and the state.
The ARPA grants were intended to offset economic losses associated with the COVID-19 pandemic.
Both of the casino-owning tribes expressed support for the bill bolstering the Mashantucket Pequot and Mohegan Fund.
"With new revenues from sports betting and internet gaming coming in above and beyond projections, now is the time to restore the fund to its previous levels in recognition that our employee base hails from almost every city and town in the state and that our vendor relationships are likewise far and wide," Rodney Butler, the Mashantucket chairman, said in testifying before the committee at a March 24 public hearing.
Butler noted that the bill would prohibit any reductions in the fund unless the governor certifies an emergency requiring such a reduction. The House and the Senate would each have to approve the reduction by a two-thirds vote of its members.
James Gessner Jr., the Mohegan chairman, said the tribes have shared more than $2.4 billion with towns across the state since the inception of the Mashantucket Pequot and Mohegan Fund.
"Given the revenue shared each year under our compacts, combined with the new revenue from sports wagering and igaming, we strongly support increasing the money distributed to Connecticut towns and encourage a higher percentage to be shared with our neighbors here in southeastern Connecticut," Gessner said in written testimony.
Randy Collins, advocacy manager for the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities, said the increase in the fund would provide municipalities with needed revenue and "reduce some of the pressure on the regressive property tax."
The Connecticut Council of Small Towns also testified in favor of the bill.
While no town-by-town breakdown of the fund's proposed distributions accompanied the bill, Osten provided such information in proposing a 2022 version. It shows, for example, that the fund's $270,204 allocation for East Lyme in the current fiscal year would be raised to $723,587 in 2025-26.
New London's $1.7 million allotment in the current year would increase to nearly $4 million in 2025-26, while Norwich's grant would climb from $2.4 million this year to $3.9 million in 2025-26.
The grants are based on such factors as the value of state-owned property in a municipality, the presence of private colleges and general hospitals, population, equalized net grand lists and per capita income. Payments are made in three equal installments on Jan. 1, April 1 and June 30.
