Staff Blog
Table games legislation is quietly deadlocked
A week ago, I got astride my bicycle, turned my phone off, and set off for a leisurely five-day ride to Pittsburgh. Amazing how much can happen in a week: I arrived to the news that the state budget had finally passed and that table games (blackjack, poker, etc.) were legalized as part of that budget.
Only they weren't.
Little-reported is the fact that while the General Assembly may have agreed to fill about $240 million worth of the state budget with table games, lawmakers haven't yet passed the legislation needed to legalize them. And now the General Assembly is in recess until Nov. 9, meaning that — for the next few weeks, anyway — table games are potentially still up for grabs.
There are a couple of hold-ups.
One is the rate of taxation for table games. Proposed taxes on table game revenues range from arond 10 percent to the mid-30s. There are similar disagreements over licensing fees.
Another is that while the Senate currently holds two bills relating to gambling — one that contains gambling reform, and another that would legalize table games — the House has both lumped into the same bill, which originated in the Senate (Senate Bill 711).
Casino opponents, like Rep. Paul Clymer (R-Bucks), may not vote in favor of the House's bill, despite the reform components. The Senate's bills, on the other hand, would let those politicians vote for reform, but against table games. Clymer, for example, would favor the Senate's gambling reform bill (Senate Bill 1088), but would work against the table gaming legalization bill (Senate Bill 1033).
Meanwhile, proponents of table games have come up with a novel way of pushing their agenda: holding universities and museums hostage, refusing to deliver payments for "nonpreferred institutions" until the legislation passes.
Reports the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:
The delayed payments are for 28 institutions in a strange-sounding category called "nonpreferred appropriations," and include such major venues as the University of Pittsburgh, Penn State University, the Carnegie Museums, the Children's Institute of Pittsburgh, Temple University and a dozen other groups in Philadelphia.
[...] (Table games legislation is quietly deadlocked - Philadelphia City Paper) [...]