Visitors to the Station Casino will never glimpse water as they enter and leave the building, which sits on twin barges in a few inches of water. Water is pumped up from the river to fill a moat in which the Flamingo Casino floats. The casinos wooed Kansas City with a promise of fattened tax coffers. Yet the three longest-operating casinos have all protested portions of their tax bills and tied up millions of dollars in legal proceedings. I've been in office for 12 years, and I've never, ever dealt with a business so obstreperous and so uncooperative.
Political corruption is yet another unwelcome byproduct of the casinos.
Missouri's House Speaker of 15 years resigned last year after federal authorities began investigating his alleged financial ties to various casinos. A Rising Tide Crime, too, has followed the casinos. One month later in an unrelated incident, a jury convicted a Kansas City woman of killing her husband, allegedly to pay her gambling debts with the insurance money. Area police departments are now dealing with financial crimes in which the motive appears to be money for gambling and individuals filing false police reports in attempts to cover their casino losses. Todd Graves, Reardon's counterpart in neighboring Platte County, has witnessed various casino-related crimes ranging from aggravated assaults to DWIs to petty thefts.