NATIONAL GAMBLING IMPACT STUDY COMMISSION

LASZLO ENGELMAN

MR. ENGELMAN: My name is Laszlo Engelman. I'm the manager for the data base assembly for the 100 plus communities. I'm fortunate to have some good expert consultants available.

The first step in establishing the 100 community data base is to establish the 100 communities. In your handout there is item number one, selection of the 100 communities. After consulting with the experts it was decided that the communities will be what the census bureau calls places. There are 3,148 places with a population of 10,000 or more in the United States, according to the 1990 census, which accounts for about 60 percent of the total population of the United States or it should give us a good coverage.

Using these 3,148 places, we will be selecting places in a random order. After selecting places in a random order we're going to have to classify each place with respect to the accessibility to casinos and lotteries. In order to do that, we have to consider the aggregate gross revenue of a closeby facility as well as the distance of that closeby facility. A smaller gambling facility will attract from a smaller region, smaller radius, while some place like Atlantic City may attract from a larger area. So we have to consider both their size, as well as their distance from the community.

The second step is the collection of the data elements. There's a list of major sources that we're going to collect data from. This includes the US Counties CD-ROM produced by the U.S. Bureau of Census, the Reese 1996 CD-ROM which is produced by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. We plan to obtain crime data from the Department of Justice; mortality, suicide, marriage and divorce rates from the CDC and CHS; bankruptcy data at the county level which is the finest that we could locate is available from SMR Research Corporation; and municipal and county bond ratings we are going to be obtaining from Standard & Poor's which is still a question mark.

After all the data is assembled, we're going to be attempting to fill in the holes, places where the data wasn't available, and note which data we are filling in so people, when they would get this data as a public access file, they would be able to, if they wish, ignore our interpretation of use and do their own. That's all I have to say.

CHAIRMAN JAMES: Thank you very much.