You can’t watch television these days without being assaulted by ads for and against Proposition 27. The proponents of 27 have also invested a great deal to turn Californians against Proposition 26, a measure that would allow gaming tribes in California to offer sports betting in person at tribal casinos and horseracing tracks, as well as allowing them to add roulette and some dice games to their portfolio.

On paper, Prop 26 doesn’t seem that bad. After all, shouldn’t California’s gaming tribes be allowed to compete with Las Vegas casinos by offering popular games like roulette and craps? Isn’t sports betting now legal thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2018 decision in Murphy vs. the NCAA? We hold that people were already betting on sports, and will continue to bet on sports legally or illegally as sands pass through the hourglass. Therefore, sports betting should be legalized and taxed.

However, we oppose Proposition 26 because it allows for in-person sports betting at already established horseracing tracks. This might not seem like enough to oppose a measure providing greater gaming competitiveness to California tribes. But given the increasingly troublesome record of premature horse deaths and abuse at our race track facilities throughout the state, we do not think these facilities should be granted an additional reason to visit. Bring back a measure without the horseracing track provisions, and we will support it.

As for Prop 27, we recognize reports that online betting is a particularly insidious and addictive form of gambling. We followed L.A. Times columnist Michael Hiltzik’s work identifying a study by McGill University in Montreal and the Oregon Research Institute that found online gaming leads to problem gambling. In a world growing increasingly attached to smartphones, the prospect of this mode of gaming is an all-too-available source of trouble.

But there is so much more that’s wrong with 27. First, it is an obvious attempt at some of the nation’s more powerful gaming operations – among them the popular fantasy sports gaming apps DraftKings and FanDuel – to profit from the country’s largest untapped pool of potential sports gamblers. It promises hundreds of millions per year toward housing the homeless population and providing them with wrap-around services, but these are just projections. Remember voting to approve the State Lottery in 1986? That was supposed to solve education funding.

Further, the money supporting the unhoused must move forward in perpetuity. If the state gets a handle on the homelessness crisis in five or 10 years,  it doesn’t matter. Proposition 27 will continue to fund homeless programs no matter how much progress is made. An entirely new state constitutional measure might be needed to redirect that money to the next crisis of the moment in the 2030s, likely related to climate. Further, given the addictive nature of online gaming, how many homeless will be created by this proposition’s side effect on thousands of families losing it all?

But aside from the homeless funding, billions more will be leaving the state without creating any jobs outside those that employ some supportive housing construction. The gaming interests will reap outlandishly lucrative profits likely to create plenty of jobs at DraftKings’ and Fan Duel’s corporate offices on the eastern seaboard. But it won’t create any near the Golden State.

The Yes on 27 forces would have also you believe that the measure provides an ample bounty to smaller and nongaming tribes in California. But, like the homeless funding, these tribes are counting on questionable projections and may not receive anything near what they are hoping for or need. And we’re only talking about – according to the gaming tribes opposing the measure – three tribes that support 27. Even if there are a few more that they didn’t disclose, it’s but a handful who have been coaxed into supporting 27 and may come to regret it.

Proposition 27 is likely just the first attempt by Big Gaming to inflict online sports gaming on the largest state in the nation. Better measures may be written in the future, but this one is a disingenuous money grab filled with a mostly empty promise to solve the crisis of the moment. We encourage voters to reject it.

Photo Image by Nina Shatirishvili.