A Pennsylvania hearing on internet gambling was supposed to be held yesterday, but as you might be able to tell both from the title of this article and the phrase “supposed to,” that never happened. The goal of the hearing in front of the House Gaming Oversight Committee was to discuss how other states had handled the legalization of online poker and daily fantasy sports (DFS).
In late June, the House passed a bill which would legalize online poker and DFS and it looked like happy days were ahead. The next step was to have the same measure passed by the Senate. Now, there are always dissenters, but it was generally thought that the Senate would receive the bill favorably. One big reason why lawmakers were leaning towards giving online poker the greenlight: they needed to fill a massive hole in the state’s budget.
The Pennsylvania General Assembly passed a $31.8 billion budget bill in June, but Governor Tom Wolf was never able to sign it because it did nothing to address how all of the spending would be funded. About $1.3 billion in new revenue sources were needed; one of those sources was to be online gambling, which was estimated to provide $100 million in revenue to the state.
The Senate never got around to dealing with the online gambling bill in the summer, so it was pushed to the fall, specifically this week. But now, as has been noted, a hearing (in the House, possibly meant to shine a new light on the bill and give the Senate a nudge) about online gambling has been cancelled.
A DFS bill made it out of the Senate Appropriations Committee, but really, online gambling as a whole needs to be looked at, not just DFS, if any dent is going to be made in the budget. The bill that came out of the House not only covered online gambling, but general gambling expansion in the Commonwealth, as well.
It is entirely possible that it will be rescheduled, but the problem is that there are not many days left before the November elections, after which there will be many new faces in the legislature and online gambling will be pushed to next year. Today is the last day of the September session. In October, there will be two sessions: October 17th to October 19th and October 24th to October 25th. Thus, after today, there are only six more days during which something can be done about online poker and online gambling, in general, for 2016.
One would think that lawmakers would be motivated to get something done, as otherwise they will need to come up with another way to generate $100 million, so it is not out of the question that despite this disappointment, we will hear good news in October. Legislators could certainly work on things in the interim and be ready to pound something out quickly next month. For now, though, we will have to wait and see.
