Sports betting, medical marijuana, ‘gray’ slots bills fail to cross the finish line
On the final day of the 2022 General Assembly, Republican members of the Senate had a lot to be happy with.
GOP Senate Floor Leader Damon Thayer, R-Georgetown, closed the Senate’s business with a speech highlighting passage of legislation on conservative priorities: legislation that cut the state’s personal income tax, a bill that further restricted access to abortion in Kentucky, a bill that tackled perceived Critical Race Theory in schools, and more.
Bills to legalize sports betting and allow medical marijuana in Kentucky weren’t among those accomplishments.
House Bill 606, a bill that would have legalized betting on sports contests in the state, was never heard on the Senate floor. Senate President Robert Stivers, R-Manchester, didn’t support the bill and said that it wasn’t even close to receiving the support of a majority of Republican Senators or the majority support of a committee.
Thayer, a proponent of legalizing sports betting, said the votes just weren’t there this session, but there’s reason to hope for another outcome next year with several senators leaving the legislature this year.
“Everywhere I go people stop me and ask ‘why can’t we pass sports betting.’ I can’t make (lawmakers) for it if they don’t want to be for it.”
The bill passed 58-to-30 in the House, a younger chamber whose ranks are slightly less Republican-heavy than the Senate, where it got the necessary readings for a vote but never passed out of a committee.
Matt Jones, who founded Kentucky Sports Radio and has flirted with running for office in the past, hectored legislators via Twitter throughout the day for not supporting the measure. Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear, who like Jones and Thayer supported the bill, also piled on saying that leadership could have pushed the bill through.
Not true, said Thayer. Beshear’s words showed a “total lack of understanding on how the legislature works,” he said.
He and Stivers told reporters that even with the full support of the 38-member body’s eight Democrats, House Bill 606 wouldn’t have succeeded on the Senate floor.
A recent poll conducted by a group at Western Kentucky University showed that legalization of the activity is favored by Kentuckians of all political stripes. Another conducted this year by a pro-sports betting group showed similar results.
Beshear said “the people of Kentucky absolutely want this,” and that it’s time to move forward. Senate Democratic Leader Morgan McGarvey, D-Louisville, agreed.
“It’s a huge miss this session. We’re falling behind our neighboring states and we’re losing out on revenue,” McGarvey said.
Sponsor Rep. Adam Koenig, R-Erlanger, told the Herald-Leader that he “absolutely” plans on filing a similar bill next year.
“(I’m) disappointed, but all we did was delay the inevitable,” Koenig said, adding that he appreciated the support of GOP Senators Thayer, Julie Raque Adams, R-Louisville, and Wil Schroder, R-Wilder, throughout the process.
Sen. Whitney Westerfield, R-Crofton, filed a series of 17 floor amendments to the bill, none of which he said would act as “poison pills” to the legislation.
When asked about whether or not sports betting would become a key political issue in this year’s election cycle, Thayer said he wasn’t sure.
“You can never really predict what is going to take flight in an election cycle... We’ll have to see if sports betting or marijuana becomes an issue. They haven’t had the energy to affect the outcome of elections in the past. You can’t predict the future, though,” Thayer said.
‘Gray’ slot machines ban ‘wasn’t meant to be’
Another gambling bill that became closely linked to the fate of the sports betting bill was House Bill 608, banning so-called “gray machines.” They are unregulated slot-like machines that executives say are “games of skill” that require the player to do more than push a button.
Scores of the machines have popped up across the Commonwealth, Burning Barrel by Pace-O-Matic being one of the more prominent brands of machine gracing the walls of convenience stores, gas stations, and Fraternal Order of Police lodges across Kentucky.
House Speaker David Osborne, R-Prospect, told Spectrum News on Thursday that it’d be “next to impossible” to concur with changes made to the bill in a Senate floor amendment from Westerfield without the passage of House Bill 606 in the Senate – so the stalemate between the two chambers was never broken..
“It seemed like every time we moved one piece to get people on board, people would fall off the other side,” Osborne told the Herald-Leader. “... It just wasn’t meant to be.”
Rep. Killian Timoney said the amendment ultimately accomplished the same goal, which was banning gray machines. The original bill, he said, banned all gambling outside of charitable gaming, the lottery or horse racing and slot-like historical horse racing machines, but the amendment went further in adding definitions of types of gambling and more.
“I’m upset. I feel like the gray machine bill needed to pass, and time is not on our side... I mean, it has to at least be regulated,” Timoney said, adding that as gray machines continue to proliferate across the state, they’ll be tougher to ban or regulate properly.
Advocates for the machines say they put dollars in small business owners’ pockets and that banning gray machines would be unfairly picking “winners and losers” in favor of the already-establishing gaming practices in Kentucky, including historical horse racing.
Medical marijuana falls short in Senate
Like sports betting, legalizing marijuana for medicinal use is a widely popular issue among Kentuckians based on available recent polling.
Also like sports betting: it didn’t have the votes in the Senate to pass.
Senate leadership essentially pronounced the bill dead weeks ago, but sponsor Rep. Jason Nemes, R-Louisville, kept working late into session.
“I believe the chances improve each session and it is inevitable that we will get medical cannabis in Kentucky in the near future,” Nemes said, adding that he will work to pass a similar bill next session.
Nemes’ bill passed 59-to-34 in the House.
The Louisville lawmaker had touted the bill as more “narrow” than some other states that have legalized medical marijuana. It included provisions banning the smoking of marijuana and growing it yourself; a clause that bars “cross-pollination” between farmers, processors, dispensers and safety testers; as well as checks that ensure a physician-patient relationship is “bonafide,” per Nemes.
Another marijuana bill that passed on Thursday was Rep. Kim Moser’s, R-Taylor Mill, House Bill 604 appropriating $2 million to create a cannabis research center at the University of Kentucky. That bill also added several other provisions making amendments to the state budget bill during a Senate Appropriations & Revenue Committee meeting on Thursday morning.
Thayer said that the passage of House Bill 604 was a potentially good sign for medical marijuana backers
“I think the marijuana advocates should take heart. The passage of Rep. Moser’s bill was a good step in saying ‘let’s do some research here in Kentucky to get us some answers,’ and I think there may be more of us who’d have an open mind about medical marijuana if we had some good, hard research to deal with some of these maladies that afflict some people,” Thayer said.
Beshear, a supporter of medical marijuana, has said that he will explore what he can from the from the governor’s office to allow it in the state.
“If they won’t pass medical marijuana, we’re going to sit down and we’re going to see what type of executive authority we have. We’re going to try to find at least some path to begin moving forward, to join the vast majority of other states,” Beshear said.
This story was originally published April 15, 2022 at 8:36 AM with the headline "Sports betting, medical marijuana, ‘gray’ slots bills fail to cross the finish line."
