ALABAMA – Alabama lawmakers have one more day to approve legislation to put a lottery referendum on the ballot for voters, but don’t expect that to happen.
House Majority Leader Nathaniel Ledbetter, R-Rainsville, said Friday he does not expect a revival of a stalled bill proposing a lottery and casinos, or a bill for a lottery only.
Monday is the last day of the session. Ledbetter said legislators have too much unfinished business to get sidetracked on the gambling issue without a clear agreement in sight.
“It being the last day, there’s going to be so many moving parts, and making sure that we can get the people’s work done is going to be a priority,” he said.
Alabamians haven’t had a chance to vote on a lottery since rejecting Gov. Don Siegelman’s education lottery in 1999, even though lawmakers propose lottery bills every year.
This year they tried a new approach, with backing from Gov. Kay Ivey for a broader package that would have allowed nine casinos, sports betting, and statewide regulation of gambling for the first time, in addition to a lottery.
The Republican-sponsored plan passed the Senate on April 13. In the House, it needed support from the minority Democratic caucus to have a chance to muster the required three-fifths vote.
The bill was on the House calendar for May 6, the 29th day of the 30-day session. But Democrats and the Republican majority could not find enough common ground after hours of negotiation. Republicans resisted efforts to use revenue from the casinos to expand Medicaid. Democrats opposed the plan to shut down electronic bingo facilities in Greene and Lowndes counties and wanted clearer language ensuring the inclusion of jobs and business participation for Blacks.
The House dropped plans to vote on the bill.
As a last resort that night, House Republicans proposed a lottery-only bill. But House Speaker Mac McCutcheon, R-Monrovia, withdrew the bill after complaints that it was rushed and lawmakers had not read it.
Even if the House had passed a lottery-only bill, it faced a likely death in the Senate. Sen. Jim McClendon, R-Springville, had already tried that this session. But his bill stalled until senators replaced it with the broader package that included the casinos.
“The only reason I didn’t do a simple lottery bill is because it would not get enough votes out of the Senate,” McClendon said. “It’s not an exciting answer, but it’s the truth.”
It took two tries for the Senate to pass the lottery and casinos plan. Sen. Del Marsh had the initial bill, but it fell two votes short on March 9. The Senate adopted essentially the same plan and passed it on April 13.
Ledbetter said that was late in the session for such a complicated and controversial bill.
“For a bill of that magnitude, it really needs to be vetted well. It needs everybody at the table and trying to work out any issues that we might have,” he said. “That’s kind of what got us. We just didn’t have enough time. Maybe knowing now where everybody stands, that might give a better opportunity in the future to look at something.“
Ivey was involved in negotiations on the gambling legislation and urged lawmakers to pass a comprehensive plan that would regulate gambling statewide and provide some benefit for taxpayers. The demise of the proposal raises the question of whether Ivey will call a special session for lawmakers to try again. Asked about that Friday, the governor was noncommittal.
“It is a situation that we needed to address,” Ivey said. “So, we’ll be taking a look at what and how to do that and when.”
The referendum on the lottery and casinos legislation would have been in November 2022.
Speaker McCutcheon told Alabama Public Television’s Capitol Journal that there’s a chance legislators could approve a comprehensive gambling bill early next year and still get it on the ballot in November.
“It’s not a lost cause at this point,” McCutcheon said. “But at the end of the day, we need more work to be done on the legislation. And we need a Senate, House, governor compromise that we can all work from.”
