Local residents used the July 30 meeting of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors to advocate against a proposed casino in the Tysons area.
The public-comment period was the only highlight of the meeting’s afternoon portion, as the board had to reschedule its planned public hearings until Sept. 10 because of a staff clerical error pertaining to new state meeting-advertisement regulations.
Casino opponents appeared at the podium wearing “No Tysons Casino” red T-shirts with white lettering, which have become commonplace at local meetings this year.
Donna Jacobson of the Lafayette Village Community Association said other casinos, such as MGM National Harbor, are located outside high-density areas like Tysons and do not interfere as much with day-to-day activities.
A Tysons casino would have negative economic impacts, including providing mostly low-paying jobs with little potential for advancement, Jacobson said.
A bill proposed by state Sen. David Marsden (D-Fairfax), which the General Assembly this year punted to 2025, does not guarantee that the casino workers would be paid union wages, she said.
While the Joint Legislative and Audit Review Commission did a casino study in 2019, an updated JLARC review should be completed before a public referendum for a Tysons casino, Jacobson said.
“We need to have current, objective assessment of whether a casino in Fairfax County would truly produce a net increase in economic growth,” she said.
Because Marsden has stated he would not continue backing the bill without at least neutrality from the Board of Supervisors, Jacobson urged board members to let their opposition be known. Silence from the board, she said, “is equivalent to an endorsement.”
McLean resident and retired CIA officer Anne Gruner concurred with Jacobson’s remarks and focused her comments on problem gambling, including a strong link to suicide.
“Like drug addiction, it actually rewires your neural networks,” she said. “It suppresses your prefrontal cortex activity, which means you have diminished judgment, inhibition and self-control. But unlike drug addiction, there is no physical manifestation of your problem, so it’s very easy to hide.”
Leslie Sarapu, a Dunn Loring Woods resident, said a casino would be antithetical to the Tysons redevelopment plan’s goals.
“Research shows that casinos significantly add to traffic, decrease home values and increase crime,” said Sarapu, who asked the Board of Supervisors to denounce the casino efforts publicly “so that outside interests aren’t hijacking Tysons for their own financial gain at the expense of the people who actually live here.”
