Table-games vote delayed

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — The state House of Representatives delayed voting on a bill to legalize table games and authorize two more casinos in Pennsylvania, because Democratic leaders were still trying to piece together support for it.

House Speaker Keith McCall, D-Carbon, and House Majority Leader Todd Eachus, D-Luzerne, did not stop to explain the delay to reporters after the chamber’s session ended abruptly Tuesday afternoon.

McCall’s chief of staff, Paul Parsells, said leaders were trying to round up enough votes for the bill to pass and were searching for Republican support.

“We don’t have a majority yet,” Parsells said.

The expansion of gambling in Pennsylvania is a key piece of October’s budget agreement to raise new tax revenue for the cash-strapped state government. But leaders of the House and Senate have struggled to find common ground on the heavily lobbied legislation.

House Republican leaders oppose the bill, which also would require approval in the Republican-controlled Senate before it can become law.

Many legislators also complained about not having enough time to read it and understand it before a vote.

Democratic leaders had hoped the chamber would go along with their plan to gut the contents of an existing bill and insert 131 pages of completely new wording that was first shown to rank-and-file legislators Monday afternoon.

Not even a preliminary vote on that plan occurred Tuesday, meaning a final House vote before Thursday is not likely.

The bill would authorize table games at the state’s nine existing slot-machine casinos — three more in the Philadelphia area are licensed, but not yet built, and two other licenses are unawarded. The tax rate would be set at 14 percent until June 1, 2011, and 12 percent after that. The casinos also would have to pay millions of dollars in license fees to the state.

Meanwhile, House Gaming Oversight Committee Chairman Dante Santoni, D-Berks, said parts of the measure were being rewritten, including the removal of a provision that would allow two more miniature “resort” casinos.

The Senate asked that the provision be removed, he said. Originally, top Democrats inserted the provision into the bill after two groups — the owners of the Nemacolin Woodlands Resort in Fayette County and Gettysburg-area investors — expressed interest in a resort casino license, Santoni said.

The gambling expansion is supposed to provide more than $300 million in tax revenue to the state in the next two years. Approval of more than $700 million in discretionary state funding for universities, hospitals and museums is awaiting the bill’s passage because, Gov. Ed Rendell said, the state cannot afford the tab next year without the guarantee of additional revenue from gambling.

Much of the held-up funding would go to three universities — Penn State, Temple and Pitt — and all three warned that delay of the money could force them to raise second-semester tuition fees.

Before the vote was delayed, Tuesday’s House session took an unusual turn.

Lawmakers who largely opposed the legislation invoked an obscure House rule that requires the entire document to be read on the House floor — ostensibly by clerks.

However, McCall ordered the representatives requesting the move to actually do the reading themselves, and to read the existing bill without the new wording in question. That prompted a shouting match.

“Your ruling makes a mockery out of the purpose of doing this,” Rep. Curt Schroder, R-Chester, told McCall.

McCall shot back, “You’re the one who made the request, you’re the one who made a mockery of the rule.”