A sports betting bill, after being approved by the Maine House, remained unacted on by the Senate when it recessed, leaving it until January 5, 2022 to be reconsidered.
This is the second time in two years a sports betting bill in Maine has moved during the legislative session, but without quite making it to finish line. In 2019 both houses approved such a bill, only to have Governor Janet Mills veto it.
LD 1352 is different from the 2019 bill in that its author Senator Louis Luchini intended it to only authorize digital sports betting. However, upon amendment, a tethering requirement was added, meaning that companies such as DraftKings would have to partner with one of the two Maine casinos. This so annoyed Senator Luchini that he did an about face and opposed his own bill. But it passed anyway.
Maine’s legislature requires that a bill, in effect, be approved twice by each chamber. In this case, the bill was passed first by the House and then by the Senate; it was approved on the second pass by the House but the Senate failed to act on it in the final instance, leaving it sitting on the Appropriations Table. That means it can’t be acted upon until January.
So far three New England states have legalized sports betting, including Rhode Island, New Hampshire and Connecticut, and Massachusetts could soon become the fourth.
