The prospects of gaining a destination casino in southeast Kansas took a big blow late Friday night when the Kansas Senate voted down a measure meant to revive the state’s horse and dog racetracks.
By a vote of 20-19 against the measure, Senators rejected a bill that was geared at making slot machines more profitable for owners of The Woodlands horse and dog tracks in Kansas City, Kan. as well as Camptown Greyhound Park in Frontenac.
“We probably debated it for about six hours or even longer than that,” said State Sen. Bob Marshall, a Fort Scott Republican. “It was pretty contentious.”
The bill was also designed to lower investment minimums to attract a developer for a state-owned casino in either Crawford or Cherokee counties.
Marshall said that two factors that damaged the coalition build to pass the measure. The first being the addition of a smoking ban on the floors of destination casinos. Originally, both the House and Senate passed a statewide smoking ban that excluded those areas, but Friday an amendment was passed to include gaming floors to the ban.
“I suspect that the poison pill that cost us two votes was a smoking ban,” said State Rep. Julie Menghini, a Pittsburg Democrat. “When they got the amendment on to eliminate that exemption, that was it.”
In addition, Senators also debated on allowing a revote to allow slot machines at the Wichita Greyhound Park in Sedgwick County — which is owned by Phil Ruffin, Sr., the same owner of Camptown Greyhound Park in Frontenac — as well as a provision to keep slots out of The Woodlands after developers of a casino at the Kansas Speedway contended that lowering the percentage of slot revenues to horse and dog tracks was “unfair” and “changed the rules in the middle of the game.”
“The owners of that casino were really opposed to letting us have slots at The Woodlands and that took two Democrats away from the vote,” Marshall said. “We thought we had both of them.
“The people from Wyandotte County and the Greater Kansas City Area Chamber of Commerce and Overland Park came out pretty strongly against The Woodlands getting slots and that was the biggest thing. Had Penn National came out and disregarded it, that probably would have made it happen.”
On Friday, voting on the bill was delayed after debate on delaying the smoking ban on casino floors until 2014 won support of the chamber. State Sen. Tim Huelskamp, a Fowler Republican, asked — and received — time to draft a proposed amendment to delay the implementation of the entire statewide smoking ban until 2014, but that was rejected when debate resumed hours later.
