State Sen. Chris Elliott: 'The people just want a lottery'

State Sen. Chris Elliott (R-Josephine) thinks too many lawmakers have lost the message when it comes the gaming legislation being debated in the Legislature.

Last week, the Alabama House of Representatives passed a motion of nonconcurrence on the Senate’s gaming substitute to send the gambling bill to a six-member conference committee.

Tuesday on WVNN’s “The Dale Jackson Show,” Elliott argued that most Alabamians aren’t concerned with legalized gambling, but they do want a state lottery.

“The people want the lottery, I mean, that’s basically what they’re after,” Elliott said. “They’re not after anything more than that. And this focus on the politics between the House version and the Senate version and why this passed and why that didn’t pass is not the issue as far as the people are concerned. They just want to be able to vote on a lottery.”

The Senator said he does not believe most of his colleagues in the Senate are going to be willing to pass a more expansive gaming bill.

“Unfortunately, what the Senate passed was I think all that the Senate was going to pass,” he said. “And I continue to hear out of my House colleagues that we’re not going to compromise on this, we’re not going to compromise on that. And unfortunately, if that’s the position, then I just don’t see a path forward for a conference committee report that has things that are untenable for certain senators in there. I don’t see a path for it.”

The Senate gambling bill ended up being markedly different than the version approved by the House in that it outlawed electronic bingo, featured no Class III casinos, no sports betting, nor any form of electronic gambling.

Elliott said he was pessimistic about the future of the legislation.

“I don’t see it passing,” he lamented, “which is why I was a little frustrated that there was a non concurrence vote in the House on what the Senate changed in the in the House legislation. Because that would have allowed people to vote on the lottery and put tight controls on the illegal gaming that was going on out there, which were two of the House’s goals. And that was contained in the Senate bill. It wasn’t everything. But it certainly was something and I’m afraid we’re going to end up with nothing.”

He emphasized that the conference committee will have to come out with a bill that’s fairly close to what the Senate already passed for it to have a chance of making it through this year.

“I’m not sure that there is very much that can happen to get senators to vote yes,” he said. “Now the conference committee, depending on the makeup of the committee and the conferees are appointed, could come out with something significantly larger and more comprehensive than what the Senate passed, but it still has to pass. And so the likelihood that whatever comes out of a conference committee, if it is different from what the Senate passed, passing is, is pretty small.”

Speaker of the House Nathaniel Ledbetter appointed State Reps. Andy Whitt (R-Harvest), Chris Blackshear (R-Phenix City) and Sam Jones (D-Mobile) as the three House members in the conference committee. The Senate did not announce its conferees before adjourning on April 4.

Yaffee is a contributing writer to Yellowhammer News and hosts “The Yaffee Program” weekdays 9-11 a.m. on WVNN. You can follow him on Twitter @Yaffee