A Dwelling Bill calling for a native referendum on a proposed casino in the Louisiana Metropolis of Slidell has cleared its first Senate hurdle after it develop into as soon as passed out of the Dwelling of Representatives earlier this month.
If it succeeds, the measure would authorize an October vote in St. Tammany Parish, which incorporates Slidell, on whether a 1996 ban on casino gambling in the placement must be reversed.
And if that long-standing ban will get annulled, a Los Angeles-primarily based developer would have the option to fetch a $250 million casino at Interstate 10’s Exit 261, moral outdoors Slidell and alongside Lake Pontchartrain.
HB 702 is backed by Accumulate. Mary DuBuisson. Earlier in Might maybe maybe per chance additionally fair, the half of legislation moved out of the beefy Dwelling ground after a 63-28 vote. Accumulate. DuBuisson received 10 more votes than she obligatory in the 105-member decrease chamber of the sigh Legislature.
On Tuesday, the Senate Judiciary B Committee voted 4-3 to approve the bill. It is now headed toward the Senate Finance Committee the place it would must be permitted to in the extinguish seem sooner than the beefy Senate ground.
The Finance Committee could change into the measure’s biggest roadblock as a twin Senate Bill by Sen. Sharon Hewitt stalled sooner than that committee dead final month and has been unable to pass to the Senate ground since then.
St. Tammany Resident Questions Integrity of Vote
The Tuesday vote on HB 702 didn’t whisk as soft as its supporters could also fair need wished. A St. Tammany Parish resident puzzled the integrity of the course of, pointing to the truth that the wife of Judiciary B Committee chair Sen. Gary Smith is one in every of the lobbyists employed to advertise the advantages of the proposed $250 million casino complex in Slidell.
Final month, Sen. Smith voted in desire of the Senate model of the distress to atomize a 3-3 tie in the Judiciary B Committee.
Responding to the St. Tammany Parish resident’s comments, the Senator said that his wife has a separate occupation and that he has been consistently balloting on gambling issues for the previous twenty years and diagram sooner than he met his essential other.
The Slidell casino effort has garnered enhance from elected native and parish officials, alternate leaders, and lawmakers. Gov. John Bel Edwards said final week that the proposed situation for the gambling venue is supreme.
Accumulate. DuBuisson has all some other time and all some other time identified that she helps the distress due to it would generate original jobs and tax revenues for the placement. Other supporters argue that a gambling venue in Slidell will pause sigh residents from touring to properties in neighboring Mississippi.
Nonetheless, non secular teams are opposing the twin casino bills, arguing that expanded gambling would result in an unwanted spike in danger gambling and hundreds of social ills.
Peninsula Pacific Leisure, which at the present owns a closed riverboat casino in Bossier Metropolis, is the developer in the back of the $250 million Slidell proposal. The firm owns properties in Original York and develop into as soon as recently picked alongside with its accomplice Urban One to fetch a $600 million casino in the Virginia Metropolis of Richmond.
Source: Slidell casino advances to next step, but no longer sooner than this senator’s vote for it raised questions, NOLA.com, Might maybe maybe per chance additionally fair 25, 2021
