Bills on expanded gaming advance to state House
Members of the legislature’s Public Safety and Security Committee on Wednesday endorsed the gaming-expansion agreement announced last week between Gov. Ned Lamont and the Mashantucket Pequot and Mohegan tribes, voting 20-2 to forward a bill containing the agreement to the House of Representatives for further consideration.
Details of how the agreement would be implemented still have to be determined. All of the gaming bills hinge on elements of the agreement and are considered works in progress, said Rep. Maria Horn, D-Salisbury, the committee co-chairwoman.
If ultimately approved by the full legislature and signed into law, the agreement authorizing the tribes and the Connecticut Lottery Corp. to operate sports wagering and online gaming would have to be reviewed by the U.S. Department of the Interior, which regulates tribal gaming.
Barring a setback, the process could be completed this summer, officials have said.
The public safety committee also approved bills specifying how gaming revenues would be distributed; authorizing a tribal casino in Bridgeport; and providing consumer protections for sports wagering.
The revenue bill, authored by Sen. Cathy Osten, D-Sprague, calls for cities and towns to receive greater shares of the Mashantucket
Pequot and Mohegan Fund than they’ve received in recent years and also would direct money to a tourism marketing fund and provide free tuition for community college students.
The committee voted 18-3 to forward the proposal to the Senate.
“Today was a big day for gaming legislation in Connecticut ...,” Osten said in a statement. “These bills are about more than just jobs and businesses and revenue and the economy — they are also about Connecticut’s history and who we are as a people. I look forward to seeing these bills successfully pass the House and Senate and be signed into law this year.”
Rep. Craig Fishbein, R-Wallingford, voted against the gaming-expansion bills, objecting that the state-tribes agreement on sports wagering and online gaming unfairly — and perhaps illegally — prohibits other gaming operators from entering the fray. He took issue with what he called the “backdoor” nature of the negotiations, which excluded Sportech Venues, the state’s off-track betting operator.
Rep. Carol Hall, R-Enfield, whose district includes East Windsor, site of a proposed casino the tribes once were eager to build, also opposed the measures. She said she couldn’t support the gaming-expansion deal because it calls for the tribes to put off the East Windsor project for at least 10 years.
“I don’t think that should be part of the deal, either,” Osten said during the hearing.
Rep. Rick Hayes, R-Putnam, voted against the Osten bill because of the provision on tuition-free community college.
“We find a new revenue stream and right away we find a way to spend it,” he said. “We have debt. Any new revenue should go toward paying down debt.”
Despite support for the bill authorizing a tribal casino in Bridgeport, no such project has been proposed.
The bill proposing consumer protections for sports wagering would, among other things, prohibit any operator of sports wagering and any family member living in the same household from placing a sports wager, and would prohibit an individual with access to “nonpublic, confidential information that could affect the outcome of a sporting event” from betting on that event.