I’ve been in Seattle the past couple days, so I hadn’t had a chance to search for Everett United news until today. Now that I have, I’m happy to report that a bit of sunlight has begun to seep into the organization’s inner workings. Two separate articles published last Friday by the Boston Business Journal and The Boston Globe confirmed Wynn’s financial backing of Everett United.

First, The Boston Globe (“Wynn finances ballot drive for Everett casino”):

In the critical campaign to win local support for his $1.2 billion casino resort, Las Vegas developer Steve Wynn has foregone a television or radio advertising blitz and put his faith and money into a street-level, door-to-door campaign, performed by unpaid volunteers under the guidance of professional political consultants he has hired.

“Wynn Resorts financially supports Everett United and its hundreds of volunteers committed to bringing our development to Everett,” said Wynn spokesman Michael Weaver. “They are a dedicated group, and we are grateful for their enthusiasm and support.”

To guide the effort, Wynn has hired Saint Consulting, a Hingham-based political specialist with expertise in winning controversial land-use campaigns, and ML Strategies, the high-powered Boston lobbying firm run by former Massport director Stephen Tocco.

Wynn Resorts did not disclose how much it has spent to support the campaign. The company will disclose campaign spending in a mandatory filing in mid-June, according to Wynn.

And the Boston Business Journal (“In Everett, as in Eastie, casino campaign groups are not what they seem”):

Steve Wynn’s firm isn’t the only one pumping cash into the race to build an Eastern Massachusetts casino. Wynn Resorts is backing Everett United, the pro-casino group disclosed Thursday – but like other developers, Wynn has been loath to disturb the grass-roots illusion that adheres to the groups they fund, and state campaign finance law does little to compel them to do so.

We still don’t know how much Wynn paid Everett United – and we probably won’t, until eight days before the June 22 special election, when municipal ballot question campaign law will require Everett United to file a finance report.

…

“Wynn Resorts financially supports Everett United and its hundreds of volunteers committed to bringing our development to Everett,” the company informed me in a statement. “We worked this past year to introduce our development plans and to inform the public,” Suffolk Downs chairman Bill Mulrow wrote in a similar statement. Neither addressed questions about how their on-the-ground campaign groups were presented to the public.

Everett United’s “about” page still calls the group “a coalition of local residents and business leaders,” and makes no mention of Wynn’s financial support – other than promoting a “special VIP party” for “Founders Club” supporters, hosted by Wynn.

Interestingly, the Globe article refers to “unpaid volunteers,” suggesting that Wynn’s financial backing extends only to Saint Consulting Group and non-labor expenses incurred by Everett United (such as the ubiquitous yard signs in Everett). This would appear to indicate that Everett United founder and president Sandy Juliano, for example (about whom I wrote in my original piece), is not being paid for her efforts.

Speaking of not being paid, I had a brief, interesting conversation on Twitter with Galen Moore, the author of the above-excerpted Boston Business Journal article, the day before he posted it. He asked me if I’d been paid to write my original piece that exposed Saint Consulting Group’s ties to Everett United. Naively, until he asked me this question, it had never even occurred to me that such a perception might seem plausible.

But I’m glad he asked. So let me be clear here, as I was to Moore: I am not in any way being compensated in monetary form or otherwise, nor have I ever been, by any casino or casino-affiliated group, nor any other group that stands to benefit from opposition to a Wynn casino resort in Everett. Everything I’ve written about Everett United, Saint Consulting Group, and Wynn Resorts (like everything I’ve ever written on my blog) has been done without compensation.

Indeed, if you’ve followed this blog for the past couple years, you’ll quickly notice that a common thread is my passion for transparency — especially as it pertains to financial transactions that affect public policy. This is true not just in content I’ve written for my own blog, but elsewhere as well: my sole Huffington Post article to date, for example, lambasted Michael Bloomberg for attempting to influence Congressional elections via a Super PAC.

Everett United, therefore, captured my attention both for its utter lack of financial transparency and, perhaps more crucially, due to my own longtime connection to the town of Everett. It was a Facebook acquaintance’s Liking of the group’s page that first led to my curiosity about it. And I’m glad to see that, thanks to Galen Moore and Mark Arsenault (the Globe reporter of the above-excerpted piece, with whom I also communicated prior to the publication of his article), Wynn Resorts, Saint Consulting Group, and Everett United are slightly more transparent now than they were just a few weeks ago.

There is still a long way to go. Outside of that one open letter posted last week to Everett United’s Facebook page, I haven’t yet seen any references on the group’s Facebook page or Web site explicitly linking Everett United to Wynn Resorts. Moreover, this continued opacity has taken its toll on casino opponents who lack comparable funding. From the Globe article:

The relentless Everett United campaign has overwhelmed opponents, who lack a sponsor.

“It’s pretty intense from the pro side, Everett United,” said Everett resident Evmorphia Stratis, an opponent who has tried to organize against the development without much luck. “There is so much money behind it, and who am I?”

This is not to say that Wynn Resorts has no right to fund a pro-casino group simply because its opponents lack similar funding. But the secrecy of the coordinated effort certainly contributes to an impression of widespread organic support that may not be quite as unanimous as it currently appears.