Time Ticking on Slidell Casino Bid, as Louisiana Legislative Session Ends June 10
If voters in Slidell and St. Tammany Parish are to face a local ballot referendum this Nov regarding a potential cassino resort, state lawmakers inward Baton Rouge must number quickly.
The LA Legislature’s 2021 session is circle to destruction on June 10. Before then, lawmakers inwards the Senate and House must come to terms on a note that would tolerate surface area voters inward St. Tammany to determine whether they bid to oddment the parish’s longstanding forbiddance on commercial-grade gambling.
Senate Bill 213, a statute that would make just now that, passed the Senate Judiciary Committee on Apr 19. But it’s since been afterward stalled inward the Senate Finance Committee.
As a result, Rep. Mary DuBuisson (R-Slidell) introduced House Bill 497 — nearly selfsame(a) legislation to SB213. This week, HB497 passed the House Administration on Criminal Justice by an 8-2 vote.
DuBuisson’s visor now moves to the House story for consideration. If it passes there, HB497 would head to the Senate where it would need to toss two chamber committees, and a Senate vote, before head to Gov. John the Divine Bel Edwards’ (D) desk.
Casino Debate
Peninsula Pacific Entertainment (P2E) wants to relocate its unsympathetic DiamondJacks Casino licence to Slidell, a market place it believes is to a greater extent attractive. The company, if a unsubdivided majority of voters backrest the potential ballot referendum inward November, says it testament build a to a greater extent than $250 1000000 gambling casino holiday resort at the Lakeshore Marina.
The statute law existence considered in Baton Rouge wouldn’t authorise P2E’s Slidell casino. Instead, it would require St. Tammany Parish voters if they need to allow the externalise to displace forward.
I need to spring them a chance to voting on this project,” explained DuBuisson.
Religious organizations and the LA Family Forum are electioneering against the ballot referendum.
“Very few businesses popping up close casinos,” opined Will Charles Francis Hall of the Pelican State Baptists organization. Asaph Hall added that statistics from the Louisianan Department of Health shows that the list of job gamblers inward the province has tripled since the legitimation of gambling inwards 1993.
Rep. Denise Marcelle (D-Baton Rouge), who supported HB497 inwards committee, said the legislation isn’t expanding gambling, but deals with relocating ace of the state’s 15 commercial casino licenses.
Session Countdown
A recent canvass found that a majority of residents in St. Tammany Parish want to adjudicate on the gambling casino matter. But politicking inwards the LA chapiter power forbid them from having that opportunity.
P2E says if res publica lawmakers and the governor yield local voters the powerfulness to set its cassino fate — and a majority lends their support — the Slidell gambling casino would create 1,600 building jobs and 1,000 permanent positions.
As an incentive, P2E has offered to make up $30 1000000 to build a sports and entertainment composite on the 100-acre situation at the Lakeshore Marina. The cassino manipulator has to boot promised $5 jillion to facilitate construct the Slidell tintinnabulation levee.