Struggling Hawks Prairie Casino seeks a tax break from Lacey
Hawks Prairie Casino, a non-tribal gambling destination in Lacey, is again looking for gambling tax relief from the city, according to a letter from the general manager.
The letter was included in agenda materials for a city finance committee meeting, and the request was briefly mentioned during Thursday’s City Council meeting. Mayor Andy Ryder said he wants to discuss the request at a future council work session.
The casino is seeking a 50 percent reduction in the gambling tax for the third and fourth quarter of 2020 and a 25 percent reduction for all of 2021 “so that we can try to recover the hundreds of thousands that we have lost this year to date and keep the business from having to close,” the letter reads.
The letter was sent by General Manager David Magee. He says the business employs 130.
“From 2017 to 2020, the (state’s) minimum wage has increased over 62 percent, causing erosion of card rooms’ bottom lines and causing some of them to close their doors,” he writes. “We can’t raise our prices on the casino floor like other businesses can and the restaurant is a very small percentage of our revenue.”
The pandemic isn’t helping either, Magee wrote.
“We are also required by the governor’s office to open and operate at less than full capacity on our tables,” he writes. “Phase 2 limits us to 25 percent capacity, which also means 25 percent of our normal revenue with no indication of when or if we can reach full capacity in 2020.”
According to the city, the casino received a five-year tax break from Lacey beginning in 2006. That reduction was then made permanent in 2015 by lowering the gambling tax rate to 7.5 percent from 10 percent. The current request, according to the letter, would lower it to 3.75 percent for the second half of the year and to 5.6 percent for all of 2021.
Before the tax relief request, the city was already forecasting gambling tax revenue to fall to $170,000 from $340,000 because of the pandemic, Finance Director Troy Woo said. If the request is approved, it would fall even further, he said.
This story was originally published July 10, 2020 at 5:45 AM.
