The road to legal online gaming in Pennsylvania will evidently stretch into next year. State lawmakers last week passed several amendments to HB 649, the bill establishing a full slate of legal online games which cleared the state House Gaming Oversight Committee last month, but delayed a full House vote on the measure indefinitely.
Staff members of State Rep. John Payne, the gaming committee chairman who is sponsoring the bill, told Card Player magazine that the full House will not vote on the measure this year, but that he will reintroduce it and bring it back up for a vote in the spring.
Meanwhile, it now seems unlikely online gaming will be legalized as an amendment to the state budget as the leaders of the House Republican majority had hoped. As lawmakers in both chambers continue to struggle to pass a budget for 2016, the latest House amendment that added online gaming to the omnibus budget bill has received no support in the Senate.
In any event, the budget route to legalization would skip debate over details of an online gaming program, simply legalizing the activity. Enabling legislation setting out the details of online gaming would still be left for next year’s session.
The House bill actually had been set for a vote last Thursday, but House leaders canceled the vote after four amendments were tacked on and passed during debate.
The amendments included a controversial plan to authorize up to five video gaming terminals to be placed in taverns, private clubs and other venues with liquor licenses. Lawmakers say that could add nearly $200 million in revenue to the budget proposal. Another amendment would allow Pennsylvania airports to install multi-use computer terminals offering interactive casino games to ticketed passengers.
It is widely believed that the Senate will not approve the bill as amended, because of pushback from the 12 current land-based casino licensees to new competition.
“The casinos—all 12 of them—strongly oppose the (VGT) amendment, which means that as long as that amendment forms part of the bill, the casinos will lobby to overhaul or, if necessary, to kill the measure,” Gambling Compliance Research Director Chris Krafcik told Casino City Times. “In my opinion, there is simply no way legislation as ambitious and wide-ranging as this passes without support from the casinos.”
Executives of those casinos, in fact, sent an email to lawmakers, obtained by Casino City Times, strongly opposing the amendment.
“VGTs will harm commonwealth gaming tax revenue and casino employees, (as well as) local communities and businesses and gaming patrons, and undermine public protection,” the email said. “We again urge the General Assembly to reject any and all legislative initiatives authorizing VGTs in bars and taverns. We note that rejection of VGTs is squarely in the public interest inasmuch as the commonwealth is a 55 percent partner in our casinos’ slots revenue, and such revenue supports multiple public causes at the state, county and local levels.”
During debate, some House members criticized what they called “mistruths” in the email, such as a claim that revenues of the original nine Illinois casinos have fallen 43 percent since VGTs were introduced in 2009.
“They are inferring that VGTs did this to them, and that couldn’t be further from the truth,” said Rep. William Kortz, noting the 2008 smoking ban, the national recession that began in earnest that year, and the opening of a 10th casino in 2010. “They failed to mention all of these facts,” Kortz said. “Shame on them.”
Sponsor Payne told the publication he is simply pleased online gaming legislation is still on the chamber’s agenda. “Right now we’re just happy the bill is still alive, because there have been many times during this entire process when we were told that the gambling bill was dead,” he said.
“The Speaker indicated that the amendments had to go on the bill or it wasn’t moving, so the VGTs had to be part of the process. Whether or not that’s a good or bad thing, we’ll find out when we get out of second (committee).”
