New Hampshire casino bill fails again

Legalisation of the casino industry in New Hampshire has failed again as the Senate voted 11-10 against it.

US.- Casino legalisation has been a recurrent issue in the New Hampshire Congress as Sen. Lou D’Alessandro has been pushing different bills for nearly 20 years. However, over and over again every initiative has fallen short, as the latest one did last week when the Senate dismissed the proposal on an 11-10 vote.

“My highest level of frustration since I’ve been around here was [in 2014] when we passed this [in the Senate], we brought it over to the House, and I lost by one vote,” said Sen. D’Alessandro. “And that vote was cast by the [then-Deputy Speaker Naida Kaen] because it was a tie vote, so we lost the vote,” he added as he – unsuccessfully – exhorted his colleagues to vote for this year’s proposal.

According to Sen. D’Alessandro, New Hampshire has lost nearly a billion dollars in revenue due to casino rejection. However, despite the fact that 2018 bill would create two 10-year casino licences at a cost of US$40 million each, with a renewal fee of US$1.5 million, generating US$100-150 million in taxes, the bill divided the Senate, but ultimately fell short by one vote.

Sen. Martha Fuller Clark explained that she doesn’t oppose gambling “on a moral basis” but on “an economic basis”: “This would suck so much revenue out of other elements of our economy,” she said.

Not only did the bill failed to pass, but Sen. Gary Daniels also started to put forth a motion to permanently kill the bill. However, Sen. Dan Feltes successfully presented a motion to table in order to preserve the option to try to resurrect the bill before the end of this session.