Red Hawk on the road to financial recovery
By Dale Kasler, Sacramento Bee
Red Hawk Casino’s debts are so crushing, its tribal owner once warned the venue might close and the Legislature had to provide a bailout plan.
Now the Shingle Springs casino could be on the verge of completing a state-assisted financial makeover that would remove many of the doubts about its viability.
If costs are reduced as expected, Red Hawk’s “prospects are pretty good,” said Ken Adams, a gambling industry consultant in Reno.
But even if it stabilizes its finances, Adams said Red Hawk will never approach the profitability of the area’s most successful casino, Thunder Valley in Lincoln. Red Hawk’s Highway 50 location is too far from Sacramento to draw the volume of business seen at Thunder Valley.
It does not seem right that taxpayers should have to bail out the private Tribal casino.
Let ’em fail. It is NOT the business of government to bail out industries, especially those industries of a ‘sovereign nation’.
When you create protected classes of people, with rights beyond what other people have, this is what happens. It won’t help to bail them out. It’ll just continue to be a money pit.
State and local governments provide incentives to businesses all the time. Successful businesses provide jobs. This is nothing out of the ordinary.