Slidell City Council Rejects St. Tammany Parish Casino Referendum

The Slidell City Council inward Pelican State this week voted against a proposed ballot referendum that would appropriate residents inward St. Tammany Parish to settle whether they wish well to heave a long-standing forbiddance on commercial gambling.

With ii of the niner metropolis council members remove from Tuesday night’s meeting, the casino referendum issue required fivesome votes in livelihood to make the local government’s backing. After ii hours of fervid debate, only if tetrad metropolis council members lent their approval to placing a play query before voters in November.

I reject to adventure with Slidell’s future and our security,” declared council member-at-large Glynn Pichon.

Councilmember St. David Dunham, who was unity of the Little Joe who voted in favor of the casino resolution, argued that the council should financial backing allowing residents — not lawmakers or local officials — to make the net say on whether they need to tip over the 1996 parish balloting that prohibited commercial riverboat gambling.

“What we’re deciding is just now a symbolical measure,” Dunham said. “What’s to a greater extent American than beingness able-bodied to vote for something?”

Vote Has No Legal Bearing

Peninsula Pacific Ocean Entertainment (P2E) shut its DiamondJacks Casino inwards Bossier City last-place yr during the pandemic. The California-based gambling casino manipulator wants to relocate its gaming permission to an expanse less pure with cassino riverboats. The company believes it has found an idealistic situation in Slidell at the Lakeshore Marina.

But for the res publica to take into account P2E to establish a unexampled cassino and fetch its gaming allow south, St. Tammany Parish residents demand to mark sour on allowing commercial message gambling.

Senate Bill 213, introduced past Sen. Sharon Hewitt (R-Slidell), seeks to come in the gaming referendum interrogation before parish voters. The bill passed the Pelican State Senate Judiciary Committee in conclusion hebdomad and is currently inwards the chamber’s Finance Committee.

If the practice of law passes the Senate and House and is after signed past the governor, St. Tammany Parish voters would press inwards on the cassino thing in November. The Slidell City Council’s refusal to indorse the referendum has no more heading on the Federal Reserve note in Baton Rouge, other than perhaps resulting inwards some province lawmakers ever-changing their persuasion on whether to supporting the resolution.

Parish Anti-Gambling Attitudes

A canton of a century ago, voters inwards St. Tammany Parish easy rejected a move to decriminalize riverboat gambling. The come out garnered just 38 percent support.

Twenty-five years later, some believe anti-gambling attitudes experience changed. During the 2020 presidential election, 67.3 percent of St. Tammany voters gave their financial support to allowing sports betting to run within the parish.

P2E says if residents lift the ban on play inward the parish, it would enthrone more than $250 jillion to establish a young gambling casino resort. That would make 1,700 building jobs and 1,000 lasting positions thereafter.

While the Slidell City Council will not endorse the ballot referendum, inwards Feb the St. Tammany Parish Council did. The parish council voted 11-1 inwards favor of the resolution.

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