Pennsylvania Casino Smoking Bill Continues to Linger in State Capitol
Legislation inward PA that seeks to faithful the indoor smoking loophole afforded to casinos and sure other businesses passed a House committee last-place November. Five months later, the step allay hasn’t been acted on by the replete(p) House of Representatives.
The PA Health Committee signed off on House Bill 1657 on November 15. Known as the Protecting Workers From Secondhand Smoke Act, the statute was authored past country Rep. Dan Frankel (D-Allegheny), a longtime proponent of banning indoor tobacco plant utilize to protect employee health.
Frankel’s HB 1657 was initially scheduled for review article in the House chamber this week, but the item was pulled from the docket after the lawmaker said more clip was needful to mass meeting upwardly support. Legislative efforts to get rid of casino smoking interior Atlantic Ocean City casinos seem unlikely anytime soon, though a lawsuit filed this month seeks to prohibit tobacco plant utilise at the ennead New Jersey casinos through a court of law order.
Pennsylvania lawmakers representing casinos inward Philadelphia are concerned that a smoking banning would ensue in some gamblers taking their stage business an minute east to Atlantic Ocean City.
Smoking Stalemate
Pennsylvania’s Clean Indoor Air Act passed inwards 2008 provided an elision for casinos that allows brick-and-mortar businesses to allocate upwardly to 25% of their gaming flooring blank for tobacco plant use. Of the 17 casinos in the commonwealth, only when two, Parx Casino inward Bensalem and Parx Casino Shippensburg, don’t occupy advantage of the smoking allowance.
However, Parx is the richest gambling casino of the bunch. The gambling casino situated just northerly of City of Brotherly Love won $588.2 one thousand thousand shoemaker's last year to easily topper second best Wind Creek Bethlehem-Judah at $526.3 million. Frankel reasons that Parx’s performance shows smoking bans are good — not defective — for gaming businesses.
It’s preposterous to reason that smoking bans are tough for business when Pennsylvania’s most successful gambling casino is voluntarily smoke-free,” Frankel said last descend after his bank note cleared the Health Committee.
“A growing body of grounds suggests that smoke-free environments pull to a greater extent customers, not fewer,” Frankel added. “Pennsylvanians should not get to pick out betwixt their jobs and their health. This legislating is non just undecomposed for wellness — it’s also sound for business.”
Industry Claims
Commercial gaming lobbyists carry on to narrate lawmakers that smoking bans injure business. In Atlantic Ocean City, the Casino Association of New Jersey commissioned a hit the books that concluded a smoking ban would melt off annual gaming revenues by as often as 25%, decisive income that would head to significant layoffs and maybe cassino closures.
In Pennsylvania, some analysts trust Parx has become the richest gambling casino because it attracts much of the nonsmoking crowd. If a smoking censor was instituted statewide, that demographic would live divvied upwards among the Philly casinos, including Live!, Harrah’s, Rivers, and Valley Forge. Smokers would move around to Atlantic City and the ban would hence termination inward a meshwork loss.
According to the PA Gaming Control Board, commonwealth casinos employ virtually 14,800 people at their brick-and-mortar properties. Casino taxes bread and butter an regalia of programs, including prop revenue enhancement reductions, agricultural support, the horse racing industry, biotic community grants, and economic development.
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