New bill would create up to 25 satellite gaming facilities
Pennsylvania lawmakers seeking to create an omnibus package of gaming expansion measures continue to add new proposals to the potential package. The latest from the state Senate is a bill that would authorize as many as 25 “satellite gaming facilities,” which would be mini-casinos tied to the 12 current casino licensees.
Each facility would be permitted up to 500 gaming machines, but no table games. Off-track betting or other legal games of chance also could be offered. The sponsor of the measure, Senator Camera Bartolotta, added a stipulation that no satellite facility can be built within 25 miles of an existing casino. In a memo she filed of her intention to introduce the bill, Bartolotta said the program would be aimed at closing the budget gap by charging as much as $5 million per license to operate a satellite casino.
A portion of revenues from satellite casinos would be funneled to areas not currently receiving money from the local share tax for casino host communities.
Meanwhile, a replacement for the host-community fee, struck down last fall by the state Supreme Court, is due to be passed by the end of the month. It is one of many gaming issues still to be decided in the current legislative session, which ends June 30.
The state House added one more item to the calendar that would affect the state’s gaming industry—but this one does not relate to expansion. On May 5, Rep. Matthew Baker, chairman of the House Health Committee, introduced a bill that would ban indoor smoking at casinos, as well as bars, clubs and hotels that sill allow it in the state.
The bill would eliminate the exemption for casinos in the 2008 Clean Indoor Air Act, which allows smoking on a portion of gaming floors and permits hoteliers to designate up to 25 percent of their rooms as smoking rooms.
Meanwhile, state senators are still grappling with the latest proposal to legalize online gaming, which would impose a 54 percent tax on iGaming revenues, equal to what land-based casinos pay as tax on slot machine revenues. The Senate measure also would place iGaming under the state lottery instead of tying licenses to land-based casinos, as in New Jersey.
The argument for a higher tax—the iGaming tax passed last year by the House is 14 percent—is being pushed by Senator Robert Tomlinson and Parx Casino, the state’s most profitable land-based facility. Critics say the result of a 54 percent tax would be that no one would apply for an iGaming license.
