Massachusetts Casino Bill Banning Online Poker Defeated By 106-48 House Votes
The controversial Massachusetts bill that would allow three resort-style casinos while criminalizing online gambling was defeated by a House vote of 106-48 on Thursday. But it turns out that the provision to criminalize online gambling may have played a pivotal role in the bill’s defeat.
Defeating the proposed bill by Governor Deval Patrick, had become the cause celebre for influential House Speaker Salvatore F. DiMasi, who opposed to it both on moral grounds and what he believed were unrealistic estimates of the casinos benefits to the state.
Wednesday, the Massachusetts House Joint Committee on Economic Development and Emerging Technologies voted 10-8 to reject Governor Deval Patrick’s proposed bill to build three casinos and criminalize online poker in the state. The committee’s vote followed Tuesday’s marathon hearing, which included an hour-long plea by Patrick, and tips the scales towards the bill’s ultimate defeat by the state’s House of Representatives.
The narrow margin was a result of key abstention by Democratic Representative Robert L. Rice Jr. Prior to the committee vote, Rice had been considered a supporter of the bill by those lobbying in its behalf. To some extent they were correct; Rice does indeed support some type of casino gambling in the state. But for Rice, the devil in this particular bill was in the details and one of the details he was uncomfortable with was the provision to criminalize online gambling.
During the six hour debate on the House floor, Rice attempted to introduce an amendment that would remove the online gambling criminalization provision, but by that time, the momentum to defeat the bill in any form was already too strong.
