Representatives from Caesar’s Entertainment are asking state lawmakers to revise statutes governing riverboat casinos in Louisiana that they say are outdated, The Manship News Service reports.
Louisiana law requires gaming riverboats to have a working paddlewheel, even though the boats do not traverse the waterways. On Tuesday, Caesar’s Entertainment representatives appeared before the Riverboat Economic Development and Gaming Task Force to suggest legislative revisions to such statutes.
The chairman of the legislatively created task force in charge of recommending rules for the state’s gaming industry appeared open to changes, calling the paddlewheel requirement “ridiculous.”
Caesars Entertainment Public Affairs and Communications Executive Vice President Rich Broome told the task force changes to the laws could be economically beneficial for the state and gaming companies alike.
“It’s time to modernize our statutes and our attitude towards your industry,” said task force chairman and state Rep. Ronnie Johns, R-Lake Charles, one of the authors of the resolution that created the task force last year.
Sen. Gary Smith, D-Norco, also a task force member, agreed. “We haven’t looked at these laws in a very long time,” he said.
In fact, the Legislature has not revised its gaming statutes since they were first passed in the early 1990s, according to Johns, who told the Manship School News Service after the meeting that gaming revenues in state currently exceed oil and gas revenues.
