Pennsylvania Legislature blocked new casino bill

The State was planning to invest casino revenues among all host communities.

US.- Pennsylvania Senate has passed to the Legislature a new casino amendment focused on current (and unconstitutional) local share law to keep receiving at least US$142 millions of revenues for hosting gaming centres. However, Legislature rejected yesterday the project to keep the local share of casino revenues flowing to communities that are home to casinos.

Under the temporary regulation of local share fix, Pennsylvania casinos would have started contributing monthly with a 20 percent fee extra of the US$50 million they also paid for a slot machine license fee in equal venues. “The goal is to maintain the current obligations of the casinos to our local communities. Ultimately that’s what we’d like to try to achieve before we leave,” commented Lehigh County Republican Patrick Browne, who chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee.

Late September, Pennsylvania Supreme Court declared unconstitutional the casino legislation that coerced gambling operators of certain communities to pay over 4 percent of taxes as “local share assessment”, which were destined to several social benefits for Pennsylvania’s counties and municipalities such as law enforcement equipment and economic development projects.

As the legislation affected the 12 State’s casino differently, the Court gave 120 days to add amendments to the law in order to represent both interests of casino operators and hosts communities. Pennsylvania’s Senate approved the temporary regulation on Tuesday, in a preliminary vote, 47-1. But last night, the Legislature did not pass the bill and the project will have to wait for at least mid-January, when the new legislative operation begins.