The Alabama House of Representatives sent a comprehensive gaming package to the Senate but when it returned, the bill had been drastically amended, with sports betting excluded among other items.
Bringing Gaming to Bama
Alabama is unique in that it is one of the few remaining states without a state lottery and the only sanctioned gambling is confined to electronic bingo and dog racing. But the Alabama House endeavored to change that barren betting landscape with a pair of bills, HB 151 and HB 152, that included sports betting, a state lottery, and licensing for up to 10 casinos replete with slots and table games.
The Senate is far more conservative in its approach to legalizing gambling and radically amended the bill to where sports betting was excluded and casino gaming would be confined to the domain of the Poarch Band of Creek Indians through a gubernatorial compact that would give the tribe exclusive rights at their three sites located throughout the state.
The bills are back in a House committee where a compromise is being considered. House Speaker Nathaniel Ledbetter is optimistic that a compromise solution can be reached between the two chambers.
“If one thing has been made clear throughout this process, it’s that the people of Alabama want and deserve an opportunity to vote on this issue,” Ledbetter said.
A Bridge Too Far?
Should a compromise be reached, it would take three-fifths of the legislators in each chamber to approve the bills before it would go to the voters in a special election in September. The Alabama electorate has not voted on a gaming bill since 1999 when it rejected a state lottery.
However, reaching a compromise and bridging the considerable gap that currently exists between the House and the Senate may be a hurdle too high to climb. The House sponsor of the legislation, Representative Chris Blackshear, was openly frustrated by the Senate’s amendments.
When referencing the framework for a compromise with the Senate, Blackshear said, “I think we’ve got to identify what that middle ground is first because it’s such a distance between the two. They’re not even close bookends. So, we’ve got to first off establish what that middle ground looks like and then have those conversations.”
Blackshear also remarked on the time the House spent crafting the bill and the disappointing response from the senior chamber by saying, “They had it for three weeks, we worked on it for 15 months, and I think there are some details we can provide to them that may help them understand why we sent the package that we did to them.”
Important Allies
However, Blackshear and his pro-gambling colleagues in the House have two important allies, Senator Greg Albritton and Governor Kay Ivey. But even Albritton conceded there was a level of intractability among his colleagues in the Senate that may be difficult to traverse.
“There is plenty of middle ground. There is plenty of opportunity. What we are battling is entrenchment,” Albritton was quoted as saying.
Albritton also alluded to unregulated gambling covering a wide swath of gaming activities currently active in the state without the benefits of tax revenue.
“We are aware that we have sports betting in the state going on, same thing with online betting,” Sen. Greg Albritton said. “Neither of those issues are being addressed in this package, and the reason for it frankly is because we do not have the votes to get those incorporated here.”
A tax rate on retail and mobile sportsbooks has ranged from 24% to 32% in the gaming packages endorsed by the House.
