School systems that hadn’t built new schools since 1960 have built beautiful new campuses with casino revenues. The coastal casinos provide tax income for the cities on the coast to transform local governmental operations. Gulf Coast casinos alone generated $1.2 billion in tax revenues. They and their complementary casinos in other parts of the state generated $6.5 billion in tax revenue in 2017, enough tax income to fund the entire Mississippi state budget for a year. Ten are in Biloxi, Gulfport, and D’Iberville within the upper west coast of the state. Twelve casinos line the Mississippi coast, from Biloxi to Bay St. For more than 25 years, casinos have transformed the Mississippi upper Gulf Coast from sleepy fishing and seafood industry communities into a glitzy gaming mecca second only to Nevada in number of casinos and hotel rooms.
