December 5, 2025
Casinos have galloped into New Hampshire under the banner of charitable gaming. Now there’s a push for some local control.
A proposal in the process of becoming a bill in 2026 calls for giving host towns and cities a greater say and a way to offset the costs that come with expanding casinos and gaming venues.
Those costs can include the potential impacts on roads, utilities and demand for police, emergency services and municipal social services.
“This bill is about local control,” said Rep. Bill Ohm, R-Nashua, who is sponsoring the law to require host community agreements (HCAs) — a standard in other states with legalized gambling. “It gives host communities the right to negotiate with gaming operators for mitigation. It requires both sides to negotiate in good faith, and it’s up to the city or town how simple or extensive it needs to be.”
“What the bill says is, ‘You’re coming into my community, do this.’ There are a lot of new associated costs,” said Rep. Len Turcotte, R-Barrington, who is co-sponsoring the bill with a trio of Nashua lawmakers — Sen. Cindy Rosenwald and Rep. Laura Telerski, both Democrats, Republican Rep. Kevin Scully and others.
“This bill is not overly prescriptive,” Rosenwald said. “It doesn’t say what kind of arrangement you have. It just says that there has to be an arrangement. It doesn’t say what the agreement looks like.”
Pros and cons
Champions of charitable gaming welcome the considerable newfound funding for charities and boosted revenue to the state for public education. Critics, skeptical of gaming’s brisk expansion in a state where commercial gambling is still illegal, point to eye-popping returns for casino operators, mounting pressure on legislators to support the growth of gaming, and unforeseen and potentially unwelcome consequences for host cities and towns — where municipal budgets are already stretched thin. “Charitable gaming creates jobs and provides vital funding for charities,” Telerski said via email. “However, I have heard from constituents and others across the state that there is a desire for more local input and partnership that doesn’t currently exist. I believe Rep. Ohm’s bipartisan bill on host community agreements will allow opportunities for communication and collaboration so all parties — municipalities, game operators, and charities — can all benefit.”
Although similar laws are found in other states with commercial and tribal gambling, advocates of host community agreements expect there will be some industry resistance in New Hampshire, where casinos benefit from fewer regulations, lower taxes on revenues, and licensing fees that are minimal compared to what’s required in other states, including throughout the Northeast.
Property taxes only
In Nashua, the state’s second-largest city, two large casinos have opened in the last three years, and a casino hotel is pending at the Sheraton Tara Hotel near the Massachusetts line. The Nash, which opened in March 2025 at Nashua’s Pheasant Lane Mall, reported revenues of roughly $4.7 million in August and $4.3 million in September, eclipsing The Brook in Seabrook, traditionally the state’s highest-grossing casino, which took in $4.6 million in August and $4.18 million in September.
In the first nine months of 2025, historic horse racing (a slot machine game that uses results of randomly generated horse races to determine winning combinations) and other games of chance generated roughly $46.1 million for New Hampshire charities selected by the casinos, $43.1 million for public education and $201.7 million for operators of the state’s 14 casinos and one poker room, according to the state’s Lottery and Gaming Commission.
Nothing, other than property taxes, has been directed to host cities and towns.
“While casinos pay property tax, it doesn’t necessarily offset other resource costs,” Rosenwald said. Industry analysts and casino developers have spotlighted New Hampshire as one of the nation’s hottest markets for gaming, and the state has attracted seasoned gambling developers with considerable operations here and in other states.
“Casinos come with significant impact to cities and towns including additional police and fire activity, and infrastructure impacts, social and economic costs and much more,” Amy Manzelli, attorney for Granite Staters for Responsible Gaming, said in an email. “These casinos should have to pay for the impacts they generate — not taxpayers. Virtually every other state with legalized gaming mandates that casinos reimburse municipalities for these costs.”
Host community benefits
The proposal for host community agreements, which has bipartisan appeal, would require licensed casinos, gaming halls and operators of games of chance, as well as applicants for gaming licenses and current license holders wishing to renew their three-year licenses, to enter into binding agreements with the communities in which they operate.
The agreements, which must be approved by both sides, would be enforced by the New Hampshire Lottery and Gaming Commission.
Ohm said the goal is not to banish or burden a casino or charity gaming operator, just establish accountability and mutually agreeable terms with each community.
A separate, unique compact would be created with each casino or charity gaming venue. A local bingo hall that raises funds for veterans or a local marching band might have a very different agreement from a large-scale casino with food, drinks, live entertainment, table games and slot machines. The agreements could be as simple as requiring an operator to obey all state laws and local ordinances, Ohm said, or they could request compensation for strain on local public safety, infrastructure and social services. “in the summer with the number of people going to the beaches. They have to call in police resources and state troopers because they don’t have a big enough police force,” Rosenwald said.
As a result of legislation passed this term, the state now allows Las Vegas-style slot machines, officially known as video lottery terminals, which cost less for casinos and generate higher profits than the historic horse racing machines, according to industry data. Since late October, the state has received $400,000 from video lottery terminals, and the return is expected to grow monthly, according to a November revenue report from the Department of Administrative Services.
Massachusetts, Illinois and Pennsylvania require host community agreements between casinos and host municipalities, according to Granite Staters for Responsible Gaming. Maine, Indiana and Mississippi have revenue-sharing statutes. Connecticut, Arizona and California, which have tribal casinos, mandate compacts that provide state and local contributions.
“New Hampshire is nearly unique in leaving municipalities powerless and uncompensated,”
Manzelli said. “Despite authorizing large-scale gaming, it offers no legal requirement, no
guaranteed compensation, and no safeguard to make sure communities are made whole.”
Negative impacts
An academic study published in The Review of Economics and Statistics in 2006, examining the relationship between casinos and crime using county-level data for the U.S between 1977 and 1996, found that factors that increase crime, including problem or pathological gambling, start roughly five years after a casino opens.
In 1996, roughly 8% of crime in casino counties was attributable to the casinos, at a cost of about $75 per adult resident, according to the study. That, allowing for inflation, would translate to $150 today, said Ohm, or about $9 million per year for the city of Nashua, with roughly 60,000 adult residents.
According to the same study, by the fifth year after the introduction of casinos, robbery increased by 136%, aggravated assaults grew by 91%, auto theft jumped by 78%, burglary rose by 50%, larceny, rape, and murder increased by 38%, 21% and 12%, respectively. After five years, 8.6% of the observed property crime and 12.6% of violent crime in counties with casinos were attributed to casinos.
Other research has found that the incidence of gambling addiction increases with proximity to a casino.
“Gambling brings a lot of headaches to the community,” including “gambling addiction and drivers operating under the influence,” said George Morgan, a resident and former zoning board member in Littleton, a town of 6,000 where a casino is due to open in a space currently occupied by Staples.
“Are we going to need a larger police presence? Who’s going to pay? The taxpayer who had no voice in whether it could be here.”
Scully said he views gambling as a vice, and abides by the GOP’s state platform, which says the state should “reject expanded casino gambling and video lottery gambling as a means to balance the budget and increase spending.”
“A lot of people look at this as free money. There’s always a political price to pay to increase taxes in order to increase revenue,” Scully said. “If we’re going down that road, we should do as well as other states. Gambling and casinos are not the same as other businesses. I don’t see them as producing anything of lasting value. The downside is, once you get in that door and have a couple of drinks, you could lose a lot of money and families pay a price.”
Host community agreements would give municipalities “a greater say in terms of the conditions under which they operate with casinos, to minimize adverse, negative effects,” said Scully. “They also have a chance to revisit the agreement at the next licensing date, and try to renegotiate for consequences that they didn’t understand or foresee.”
According to the proposed legislation, “Before applying to the commission for licensure or any license renewal, an applicant shall negotiate a host community agreement with the select board, aldermen, city council or county delegation of a host community.”
“At a minimum,” the agreements “shall accommodate any and all needs of the host community that may foreseeably arise or increase,” including providing security, exchanging information between the gaming operation and host community, promoting the hiring of local residents, suppliers and vendors, “and any other matters at discretion of the host community.”
Eric Althaus, general manager at The Nash, said the state’s highest-earning casino has an agreement in progress with the city of Nashua. “We have worked very closely with the city from day one and believe it’s a seamless it,” Althaus said in an email. “We applaud the legislators for creating a way for municipalities to engage in charitable gaming with the host community agreements.”
He said that since it opened last March, The Nash has supported more than 100 nonprofits with “nearly $12 million” in allocations to charity and pays “hundreds of thousands of dollars in property tax revenue annually.”