In Virginia, the Senate Committee on General Laws & Technology recently voted to advance a bill allowing Petersburg to replace Richmond as the state’s fifth casino host city, if approved by Petersburg voters.
Richmond voters rejected a casino twice, in 2021 and 2023. The measure, Senate Bill 628, will move to the Senate Finance & Appropriations Committee for final committee review.
The bill, sponsored by state Senators Louise Lucas and Lashrecse Aird, would remove the provision requiring a casino host city to have a minimum population of 200,000 and drop the rate floor for tax-exempted real-estate property in 2017 and the poverty rate in 2019. The measure also would require a host city to have an unemployment rate of at least 13 percent in 2020; and Petersburg’s unemployment rate then was 21.1 percent. These new rules would allow Petersburg to be considered as a replacement for Richmond.
Another bill, sponsored by state Senator Lamont Bagby, also would eliminate Richmond as a casino host city, and a measure from state Senator Bryce Reeves would block any city whose voters reject a casino referendum from voting for it again for three years.
Observers said after the two defeats, Richmond officials do not appear, at least publicly, to want to block the Petersburg casino. Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney said the city was ready to move on and address other priorities.
The Senate committee also approved a bill introduced by state Senator David Marsden, allowing Fairfax County to hold a referendum on building a casino entertainment complex in Tysons Corner, near the Silver and Orange Metro lines. Marsden said, “Our economy is changing in northern Virginia, and we need this help.”
However, local officials and residents expressed concerns about the proposal. Jeff McKay, chairman of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors, said usually local government officials work with operators to come up with a plan, and then ask the state government for support. But in this case, he said, the county board found out about the proposal just before it was introduced.
McKay told DC News Now, “What happened here is that people in a vacuum worked on a plan and went to Richmond without coordinating with Fairfax County. We’re troubled by the process here that we weren’t brought in earlier.”
He added, “For other jurisdictions that have casinos, the share of revenue that comes back to local governments is roughly 25 percent. That’s not a good deal for the people of Fairfax County. If this casino generated $200 million and only $50 million of that came back to Fairfax County, and I was left with all the problems related to a casino? That’s not a good deal for my taxpayers. We’re not in this to be the state’s ATM.”
The McLean Citizens Association President Linda Walsh said, “It just doesn’t seem like a good fit for Tyson’s either, which is described as our economic engine. So we’re concerned that our Fortune 500 companies might not find that a casino is exactly who they want as a neighbor.”
In addition, the Sully District Council of Citizens Associations and the West Fairfax County Citizens Association issued a joint resolution stating, “The Joint Committee, in the strongest possible terms, opposes the potential action by the Virginia General Assembly authorizing a Fairfax County referendum for the consideration of any casinos and related ‘public entertainment’ developments near any transit station along the Metrorail Silver or Orange Lines.”
Meanwhile, Patch reported eight of the 10 state senators who voted to advance the casino bill out of the Senate Committee on General Laws & Technology received a combined total of $44,500 from Comstock Holding Companies, the Fairfax County developer associated with the proposed casino project.
