A week after voting down a constitutional amendment to protect the racino at Greenetrack, the Alabama Senate has similarly declined to bolster the legal standing of the VictoryLand racino.
Legislation sponsored by Democratic Sen. Billy Beasley would have confirmed that VictoryLand, which has battled state authorities over its legitimacy, could operate slot machine-style electronic bingo, but the bill failed to survive a procedural motion, falling two votes shy of the three-fifths margin needed to pass it.
Had it passed, together with the Greenetrack amendment, the effect would have been to codify into law the state government’s recent decision not to actively oppose electronic gaming at the two greyhound tracks.
Despite the state’s neutrality, however, machine gaming at the tracks has been thrown into question by a recent Alabama Supreme Court ruling that defines bingo only as a paper game.
Beasley’s bill arguably would have overcome this obstacle by extending to VictoryLand the right to offer any game allowed to the state’s Poarch Band of Creek Indians, which operates slot-style e-bingo in three casinos it owns.
Opponents, however, claim the bills amounted to an unwanted expansion of gaming and could possibly jeopardize any future negotiations between the state and the Poarch Band that would allow the tribe to expand its gaming offering in exchange for a state cut of the tribe’s gaming revenues.
“Anything we negotiated would automatically transfer to Macon County,” said Republican Sen. Greg Albritton, who opposed the Beasley bill.
However, armed with a 2003 referendum authorizing bingo in VictoryLand’s home county of Macon, track owner Milton McGregor says he still plans to reopen sometime in the summer.
