State senators in Delaware, after leaders declared there was no money in the state budget to allow for million in fee and tax reductions recommended by a government panel, have managed to find enough funding to pay for nearly half of the tax breaks for the first year.
The Delaware Senate passed a package including $9.9 million to fund the first year of financial relief for the state’s three struggling racinos, identifying three separate funds in the budget that are meant to help business.
The Senate voted 14-5 to pass the aid package, which say they are struggling with increased competition from neighboring states and have to share too much of their gambling revenue with the state.
The bill, which has the support of Democratic Governor Jack Markell and now goes to the state House, where it faces a much more uncertain future.
The funding includes $5 million left over from last year’s bailout money provided to the three casinos; $3.2 million from the funding meant to build the Kent County Sports Complex, and the remainder from the Delaware Economic Development Office’s job infrastructure fund.
That fund provides for highway, utility and other infrastructure projects, but also may be used to assist existing businesses create jobs. The racinos have said that layoffs would ensue without any state help.
Bushweller told Delaware’s News Journal that the money gathered from the existing funds in one-time aid for the casinos. “I’m looking at it more like a door-opener,” he said. “The bill passes and it creates a door-opener for next year.”
State Senator Harris McDowell III, who voted against the bill, complained in an interview with the Associated Press that the measure does nothing more than to bail out “failing companies.” State Senator Karen Peterson complained that the casinos don’t deserve the money, noting in the AP story that the owner of Delaware Park, William Rickman, Jr., also owns a casino on Maryland’s Eastern shore.
“There’s a lot of hungry kids in Delaware that could have used that money,” Peterson said of the revenue Rickman gains from the Casino at Ocean Downs in Maryland. There are a lot of elderly people in Delaware who can’t make ends meet.”
Bushweller defended the aid, noting that the state has increased its revenue tax on Delaware’s racinos seven times since they opened in the mid-1990s, including an increase in 2009, when the recession was at its worst and additional competition first came on line in Maryland—once the source of nearly half of gaming revenues in Delaware.
The Markell administration has called for strategy sessions on how to address the long-term viability of Delaware’s casino industry.
