Press Release: No Fairfax Casino Coalition Presses Forward Despite Hacked Website, February 4, 2025

Following today’s vote, the  No Fairfax Casino Coalition, a grassroots organization consisting of community and citizens' associations, is turning its attention to the next phase of the legislative process that will take place in the House of Delegates. Shortly after today’s Senate vote was announced, a spokesperson for No Fairfax Casino Coalition discovered their public facing website was subjected to an attack that was redirecting users to pro casino websites.

Lynne Mulston, who manages the website stated that the site would be taken down temporarily until the issue is resolved. “Obviously, our website provides our followers and interested members of the public with key information and ways to lend support to opposing the casino legislation.  I am concerned that this unauthorized redirection of our website might have been orchestrated by someone with a malicious purpose.  We will be taking appropriate steps to resolve this issue.”

Senate Bill 982 introduced by Virginia State Senator Scott Surovell to bring a casino in the Tysons area of Fairfax County passed the Virginia Senate today by a margin of 24-16 following a lengthy floor debate.

The bill will now crossover to the House of Delegates for their consideration.

Sen. Surovell was questioned at length by Northern Virginia Senators opposed to the casino plan.  Senators Barbara Favola, Adam Ebbin, Jennifer Boysko, and Saddam Azlan Salim also explained their opposition to the 40 members of the Senate citing the thousands of emails they have received from constituents and well over 100 community and citizens organizations who have urged defeat of the bill. They noted that unlike the other localities that have approved casinos, neither Fairfax County government nor its citizens have petitioned the General Assembly to authorize a casino.  

The bill’s Chief Patron, Scott Surovell, and Co-Patron, Sen. Stella Pekarsky, countered the criticism of the casino bill by their Northern Virginia colleagues by claiming that the bill would deliver economic benefits to Fairfax County and the Commonwealth. Senator Surovell, failed to provide the study he referenced regarding the developer’s economic projections. The No Fairfax Casino Coalition will be following the bill on the House side and will alert concerned citizens when SB982 is added to a House Committee agenda.

###

Media Contact: 

Lynne Mulston, Chair 214-450-9539

__________________________________

No Fairfax Casino Coalition

www.NoFairfaxCasino.org

Facebook: NoFairfaxCasino (all one word)

Press Release: The No Fairfax Casino Coalition Renews its Concerns Over Developer’s Link to Casino Study, February 6, 2025

Fairfax, VA - Even though the Virginia Senate passed Senate Bill 982 by a margin of 24-16 on February 4, 2025, and it is now headed to the House of Delegates, that hasn’t discouraged the No Fairfax Casino Coalition in efforts to obtain the facts regarding claims of financial benefit that a Tysons area casino will bring to Fairfax County and the State. 

Chief Patron of the senate bill, Senator Scott Surovell, has described the economic benefits that his bill and a new casino will produce. Calling it a boost to the economic development of Tysons, he has claimed that revenue predictions will lift the economies of both Fairfax County and the State.

In defending his bill during the February 4, floor debate in the Virginia Senate, Surovell stated the developer (for the proposed Tysons casino) had hired The Innovation Group, the same consultant hired by the Joint Legislative Audit & Review Commission (JLARC) to do the 2019 General Assembly study on five down-state casinos.  To our knowledge, if such a report exists from The Innovation Group, it has not been made public or shared with State or Local representatives.

The lack of transparency has led others to think that Senator Surovell's projections were provided by a different source.  A February 5, article by independent journalist Josh Stanfield published by Substack disclosed internal communications between the developer and Professor Terry Clower, Northern Virginia Chair and professor of public policy in GMU’s Schar School of Policy and Government.  Email records, obtained by Stanfield through the Virginia Freedom of Information Act (VFOIA), reveal that on December 10, a representative of Chris Clemente, the principal of Comstock Properties, wrote to the GMU’s Dean of the Schar School of Public Policy and Government, Mark Rozell, to engage a “comprehensive study on the economic benefits of the project.”  The records also revealed that Dean Rozell informed GMU Professor Terry Clower that Comstock Co. “…will provide all the needed data, so the scope of the work with the tight deadline may not be a challenge.”  The email exchanges between the Dean and professor Clower discussed potential compensation and whether or not the study would be a “Schar School product”  and that it would be a public document.

It is important to note that the GMU Schar School of Public and Government is named for Dwight Schar, father-in-law of Christopher Clemente, the mixed-use developer behind the proposed casino. Also, the published email exchanges indicate that the “numbers” provided by Comstock to support the Schar study were derived from several sources including a news story published by the Milford Daily News on December 18, 2020, that describes revenues generated by construction of the Wynn Resorts Encore Boston Harbor casino in Everett, Mass. 

Senator Surovell told the audience at his February 1, Town Hall the developer is working with the operator, Wynn Casino.

All indications are that the study, the economic foundation for the revenue predictions that a Tysons casino would bring to the people of Fairfax County (and the Commonwealth) is nothing more than a project financed by the developer, possibly prepared by a professor who, once engaged by the developer, somehow completely reversed his position about the benefits a Northern Virginia casino would deliver.  Something changed Clower’s mind about the beneficial economic prospect of a Tysons/Northern Virginia casino. Quoted in a February  2023, Mercury News article entitled, Why some think going all-in on a Fairfax County casino would be a bust, Clower stated “I can’t help but think of it as being in a way a measure of economic development desperation.” 

The No Fairfax Casino Coalition agrees with Professor Clower's 2023 assessment and urges the Virginia General Assembly to oppose the casino bill which has been floating on a bed of confused and unsubstantiated claims of an economic pot of gold at the end of a rainbow.

###

Media Contact: 

Lynne Mulston, Chair 214-450-9539

__________________________________

No Fairfax Casino Coalition

www.NoFairfaxCasino.org

Facebook: NoFairfaxCasino (all one word)