Brian there on WNYC.

Well, the final round to secure a highly lucrative casino license in New York City and

or Yonkers is underway with three winners slated to be chosen by years

end. Eight proposals are on the table and the stakes and potential revenue are high. Developers are

betting on billions of dollars in revenue and telling city officials that thousands of jobs

will be created. Mine's the best proposal,, mine is. The communities in question, though,

are also having intense debates themselves about whether they want a casino in their neighborhood

and the effects they might have on the people who live nearby. Joining us now to break down the

latest is Arun Venigapal, senior reporter for WNYC and Gothamist Race and Justice Unit.

Arun, hey, always great to have you on the show.

Hey, Brian, great to be here.

So this casino license story has been unfolding for like two years now, but you're right,

the proposals are now in project reviews by community advisory committees.

What does that mean?

Yeah, it's one of those kinds of typically wonkish names that can make you completely ignore the, I guess, the gravity and the potential impact of what is

happening right now, where we've gone from years, I mean, really much longer than a couple of years,

Brian, we're talking about the buildup to this,

where we had a prior round 10, 12 years ago of upstate casinos.

And under the Quoma administration and the State Gaming Commission,

they decided they would kind of give upstate casinos kind of a head start by about 10 or 12 years before we had downstate casinos. And that's where

we're at now. We're having, we had 11. Now it's down to eight casino proposals in New York City,

one that is outside. It's in Yonkers. So there's seven scatter across the boroughs and then one in Westchester. And it's now

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