There’s heavy action underway at the State Capitol on a cluster of bills that would revamp gaming in Louisiana, Jeremy Alford notes in his latest column.
“If you’re involved in the process or just watching from afar, you can’t miss them,” he writes. “Amid the Legislature’s huddled masses of policy proposals, they’re the high-rolling VIPs of the ongoing regular session. And, no, it’s not gambling. It’s gaming.”
In 1992, the Louisiana Legislature was tasked with creating a land-based casino in New Orleans, but the state constitution posed problems for lawmakers because it states that gambling should be “defined by and suppressed” by the Legislature.
Alford says lawmakers got around the constitutional roadblock by dropping two letters from “gambling” and calling it “gaming” instead. But he adds you shouldn’t “blame the Legislature alone” as the state Supreme Court upheld that lawmakers did not have to suppress the land-based casino because it was a form of gaming, not gambling.
“As Christmas gave way to Mardi Gras, it seemed as if a riverboat gaming task force was carving out a policy lane for a substantive overhaul of laws related to the industry,” Alford writes. “Influencers knew that there hadn’t been a thorough review of riverboat statutes since the 1990s. In fact, that factoid resonated in the always-cluttered echo chamber of Baton Rouge.”
Understandably, riverboat folks were feeling bullish early this year, as were the racetrack folks and the video gaming folks and the land-based casino folks.”
They saw the same policy lane and wondered if everyone could fit, Alford says.
Roughly 40 bills related to gaming operations were introduced for the regular session. But about a month into the process, Alford says some of the “once-bullish folks” behind the bills are finding the task force’s perceived policy lane to be a bit narrower than anticipated.
“A half dozen bills have already been shot down or spiked by lawmakers, and several others will soon be parked by video gaming interests,” Alford writes. “A few more are backup bills or instruments that were never intended to move. But don’t make the mistake of thinking they’re all duds. A handful of the gaming bills bring with them political drama in the form of vocal opponents going all in against cash-fueled government relations teams.”
Jeremy Alford publishes LaPolitics Weekly, a newsletter on Louisiana politics, at LaPolitics.com. Follow him on Twitter, or on Facebook. He can be reached at JJA@LaPolitics.com.
