Did long odds on casino get longer?
The question, as the Georgia General Assembly headed toward the weekend break, was not whether Columbus was moving any closer to the possibility of a casino, but whether anybody was.
The answer to the second part, it seems, is maybe. As staff writer Chuck Williams reported Thursday from the Capitol, Sen. Brandon Beach, R-Alpharetta, is author and chief sponsor of S.B. 79, just the first of many steps in making legal, then actually making real, casino gambling in Georgia. That bill was scheduled for a second hearing before the Regulated Industries Committee; it didn’t get it, because the meeting was postponed. But Beach said he expected the issue to be picked up again Monday.
Which brings us back to the first part of the question, to which the answer is … maybe not.
As currently drawn, the bill would be enabling legislation for a public vote on two resort-style casinos in the state. The original casino bill, because it included minimum population limits, would have made only two casinos possible under any circumstances, because only metro Atlanta and Savannah would qualify. But Rep. Calvin Smyre and Sen. Ed Harbison of Columbus pushed for consideration of cities such as Columbus, Augusta and Macon to be eligible should the initial legislation pass muster with both the General Assembly and the voters.
The two Columbus senators on the Regulated Industries Committee, Harbison and Josh McKoon, appear to be split, with the former an obvious yes to move it out of committee and to the full Senate, and the latter a likely no.
Time, as well as committee approval, is now a factor for casino proponents. If the bill doesn’t get committee approval and full Senate passage by the 28th day of the legislative session — Crossover Day, the deadline for Senate bills to move to the House, and vice versa — it is effectively dead for this term. Crossover Day is this Friday, March 3.
“We have to get it out of committee,” Beach told Williams, saying he is confident the support is there in the full Senate. Incentives for legislative and voter support from parts of Georgia not directly affected (aside from the education funding essential to the bill) include millions for health and emergency care in rural Georgia, where access to trauma care is literally a life-or-death crisis. Also in the pot is $15 million for broadband technology in underserved areas.
Casino-style gambling is one of those things that, politically, can seem to have unstoppable momentum until you pause and remember just how many hurdles have to be cleared before the first square foot of a casino lot will be. One of those hurdles — two of them, actually — would be the approval of the voting public, first statewide and then in every local jurisdiction where application to build and license a casino has been made.
And then, of course, there’s the cost — as in hundreds of millions, the seed money for starting a casino before any dividends start rolling in.
The pros and cons of casino gambling are still open to serious and responsible debate. Meanwhile, both proponents and opponents of the idea can take a deep breath. Nobody’s going to wake up tomorrow and find that Caesar’s Palace has sprung up across the street.
This story was originally published February 25, 2017 at 5:48 PM with the headline "Did long odds on casino get longer?."