HARNESS TRACKS OF AMERICA Executive Newsletter

HARNESS TRACKS OF AMERICA
LIFE OR DEATH IN FRANKFORT
Jody Richards, Speaker of the House in Kentucky,
told the Louisville Courier-Journal yesterday
that the bill enabling a constitutional amendment
on slots would be moved to the House floor,
although the 60 votes necessary for passage still
were not there. Separate counts indicated supporters
were in the low or mid 50s at present.
The legislation was passed by the constitutional
amendments committee, which stripped out a
provision for five racinos set aside for tracks and
sent the bill to Rules, where it has been for five
days. Once on the floor of the full House it could
be voted on at any time. The Courier-Journal’s
Gregory Hall reported that Richards’ action is “a
move that sometimes is used to kill bills.” Gov.
Steve Beshear indicated this week that if the bill
passes the House, he will move to have the tracks
provision restored in the Senate, and will support
its passage there. While the legislators considered
the matter, a group of some 500 to 600
people -- the Lexington Herald-Leader called it
“the biggest anti-casino rally yet this season”
-- jammed the Capitol Rotunda yesterday, holding
signs and cheering ministers, lawmakers and
others speaking against the governor’s plan. The
Rev. Jeff Fugate, a Lexington Baptist minister,
organized the protest rally. With appropriate
fire and brimstone, one opponent, John-Mark
Hack, head of the Say No To Casinos movement,
said, “Casino-crats are hell-bent on transforming
the commonwealth with a ‘casino republic.’”
He asked the ‘casino-crat’ politicians “to tell us
which 10% of the children in the Rotunda today
are going to be condemned to a life of addiction.”
YEA AND NEA IN BOSTON
HTA member Plainridge Racecourse got a little
help -- and a lot of hurt -- yesterday in its
slots quest. Rep. David Flynn, saying
casinos won’t work but slots at tracks
might, introduced a bill allowing them.
Executive Newsletter
A daily fax and e-mail report on racing and gaming developments in North America and beyond
Stanley F. Bergstein, Editor
March 6, 2008
Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick, meanwhile,
went to the trouble and expense of having
a 12-page color brochure extolling the virtue
of his casino plan printed and distributed to all
legislators. One of them, Rep. Ruth B. Baiser,
a Democrat from the upscale Boston suburb of
Newton, commented that she found it “interesting
that the governor is going to this extent. This
kind of glossy marketing attempt, I’ve never seen
come from someone else in government before.”
The governor, pushing furiously to get his casinos
passed, also went to excess in another area. He
announced a plan to dedicate $50 million a year
from casino take to treat compulsive gambling.
Reporter Scott Van Voorhis of the Boston Herald
pointed out in a story that the amount was
50 times higher than Massachusetts now spends,
and far exceeds any other state in the union. The
closest, Kansas, spends $17 million. The mecca
of American gambling, Nevada, spends between
$2 million and $3 million a year.
REP. ON INTERNET: TAX IT
U. S. Congressman Jim McDermott, a Washington
Democrat, introduced new legislation yesterday
calling for federal regulation and taxation of
Internet gaming. McDermott’s bill -- the Internet
Gambling Regulation and Tax Enforcement
Act of 2008 -- follows a Price Waterhouse Coopers
claim that a tax on online gaming could produce
up to $43 billion over 10 years. The American
Gaming Association’s president, Frank
Fahrenkopf, reasserted that group’s contention
that regulation and taxation of gaming is a state
matter, not a federal one. He called chances of
repeal of the current federal Internet gambling
ban remote. McDermott’s bill has only one cosponsor,
while the bill it is intended to supplement
-- Barney Frank’s similar legislation -- has
46. A McDermott spokesman acknowledged that
Frank’s bill must move before McDermott’s.
Twenty-three million gamblers reportedly
now bet on some 2,300 Web sites.