Efforts to legalize casinos in Georgia have likely failed this year since the state House speaker postponed a vote on the issue Monday, a key deadline for bills to stay alive for the 2016 session.
While bills can still be amended onto legislation that has already passed one of the chambers, Speaker David Ralston’s decision probably killed efforts to expand gambling in the state for the year.
A Senate committee in January passed legislation to create a new division of horse racing within the Georgia Lottery Corp. and ask voters to approve parimutuel betting statewide. But that measure also stalled, with supporters unsure if they could get the two-thirds majority needed to put the issue on the fall ballot.
House Resolution 807, sponsored by Rep. Ron Stephens, R-Savannah, would have asked voters to amend the state constitution to legalize up to four casinos, two of which would have been in Metro Atlanta. The accompanying House Bill 677 would have set the rules and guidelines for how casino companies would qualify for a license.
Supporters had advocated for casino gaming as another revenue stream for Georgia’s popular HOPE scholarship program. Stephens’ bill would have required that at least 90 percent of taxes and fees from the casinos go to fund the HOPE scholarship.
But Ralston said, “We have Georgians who reached out to us, and we heard them. It was my determination that the issue is not ready.”
Ralston had sent House lawmakers home on Friday without voting on the legislation, instructing them to talk to the residents in their districts before voting.
“I didn’t get a great appetite of what they had heard for a vote and I made the judgment based on what I was hearing from members,” Ralston said.
State lawmakers began studying the issue months ago as part of a committee looking for ways to shore up the HOPE college scholarship program. The program that once paid the full tuition of the state’s top students has been cut in recent years and now only funds a portion of tuition costs.
Diverting the attention from Georgia students to gambling hurt the bill’s chances this year, Stephens said.
“If you couch it in, ‘are you for casinos?’ who’s going to jump on board for that?” Stephens asked Monday. “But there is no other mechanism to get the revenue we need to get back where we were in both fully funding HOPE and books and fees. Some people got off course and took it as let’s legalize casinos. This was about funding HOPE.”
Casino and horse-racing interests plowed more than $200,000 into campaign war chests of leading legislators over the months leading up to the session, including paying for a fundraiser in November for Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle, the Senate's president.
About three dozen of the state's top contract lobbyists were hired in support of gambling expansion in Georgia. Included in that count are 16 — or about one for every four state senators — hired by MGM Resorts International. Most of them were hired in the second half of 2015 or early 2016, and MGM alone has signed at least five prominent lobby firms.
MGM has pitched a $1 billion investment for downtown Atlanta that would employ more than 3,500. Other gaming interests, from the Poarch Band of Creek Indians, a big player in Alabama’s gambling business, to Caesars Palace and Penn National Gaming, to the Georgia Horse Racing Coalition, have hired lobbyists to work on the legislation.
Those interests aren’t expected to give up on Georgia, with some lobbyists predicting they may have better luck in 2017, when lawmakers won’t be facing re-election as they are this year. Stephens has promised to continue pushing the issue.
However, Gov. Nathan Deal has made public his opposition to expanding gaming, and he may continue to be a roadblock until he leaves office in January 2019.
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