By Rachel Whitten
March 28, 2011
(KansasReporter) TOPEKA, Kan. – The Kansas House voted against debating a bill
State Rep. Doug Gatewood, a Democrat from Columbus, has tried numerous times over the last few sessions to reduce state-set investment requirements for a state-owned casinos in the gaming zone located in Cherokee and Crawford Counties. Competition from 11 Oklahoma casinos south of the Kansas state line has made potential investors shy away from putting a gaming facility in the area. Gatewood’s latest attempt was a procedural move to bring the bill up on general orders for debate. It failed on a 70 to 52 vote.
“We’re talking about jobs for southeast Kansas, bringing money into Kansas that’s actually going to Oklahoma right now,” Gatewood said.
Gatewood’s bill, which never got a spot on a committee agenda, would reduce the so-called privilege fee that investors must pay to apply to build a state-owned casino to $11 million from $25 million currently. He would also like to see the minimum investment shrink to $100 million from the current from $225 million.
State Rep. Virgil Peck, a Republican from Tyro, which is one county away from the southeast gaming zone, said casinos shouldn’t function to stimulate the economy.
“I do not think gambling casinos are economic development. The construction is economic development, but after that I don’t see a casino as economic development,” Peck said.
Furthermore, he said, building a smaller, local casino, rather than a destination casino the $225 million privilege fee would entail was not the intent of the writers of the bill.
“One hundred million would be a local casino, it’s is not going to draw people from a distance. The gamblers would be local people,” Peck said. “The folks who passed the gambling bill wrote the gambling bill, now they want to change it. They should have written it right the first time.”
In the southwest gaming zone, which is where Boot Hill Casino and Resort is located, the law says investors only had to pay a $5.5 million privilege fee and make a $50 million minimum investment. That casino’s revenue is on track with projections, bringing in more than $10 million for the state since it opened in December 2009. Lawmakers felt it would
When the expanded lottery act was approved in 2007, it created four gaming zones in Kansas, subject to approval by local voters. The other three zones already have investors, and the three casinos there are already open for business or under construction. The state takes in 22 percent of revenue from the gaming facilities.
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