Immediately upon the failure of Sen. Del Marsh’s (R-Anniston) comprehensive gambling legislation earlier this week, Marsh’s colleague, Sen. Jim McClendon (R-Springville), dropped a bill with a stated objective of creating a “simple lottery.”
The legislation, SB320, which is co-sponsored by Marsh and Sen. Garlan Gudger (R-Cullman), also includes a provision for five locations with so-called “video lottery terminals.”
On Wednesday, McClendon discussed the effort during an interview that aired on Mobile radio’s FM Talk 106.5. McClendon insisted that his bill’s simplicity could allow it to succeed in the Alabama Legislature, where Marsh’s more complex comprehensive bill did not.
“It’s going to be interesting to see,” McClendon said. “Immediately upon failure of that bill, I dropped legislation for a lottery – a very straightforward, simple lottery. I’m actually going to put a substitute out … but what the substitute won’t do, what it will not do is have any mention of the Poarch Creek Indians, any mention of Greenetrack, or church bingo, or charity bingo. It’s not talking about any of these things. It’s not affecting anybody that’s out there doing whatever they’re doing. All it does is it creates a lottery for Alabama, just like every state around us has. We may be up to 46 states now — I’m not sure, I kind of lost count — that have lotteries, and we’re the oddball. So I’ve come with a lottery proposal, and we’ll see what happens with that.”
“If, in fact, the complexity of Senator Marsh’s bill was a problem, then this bill I’m offering might have a chance,” he added.
When asked what impact this could have on existing gaming facilities on tribal land held by the Poarch Creek Indians, McClendon said that was not clear.
“No question — that might lose you votes, and, you know, that’s a mystery as to what happens,” McClendon said. “I talk to some folks who are in the know, and they said, ‘Well, if you get a lottery, you make it legal, you’ve got Class 3, the Indians get table games.’ Then I talk to somebody else who is just as much an expert, and what they say is, ‘Well, the Indians are not going to be able to do anything until they go to the Department of the Interior, the Indian Regulatory Gaming Commission, IGRA that is called, and they have to make a decision. So, I don’t have a clear-cut answer what happens with the Indians if we do a lottery.”
“But here’s what I do know — the people back in my district, I never hear them talk about the Indians,” he continued. “And one thing they never ask about and say, ‘I wish we had a casino.’ They don’t say that. What they say to me is, ‘I wish I could buy a lottery ticket without going to Georgia.'”
@Jeff_Poor is a graduate of Auburn University and the University of South Alabama, the editor of Breitbart TV, a columnist for Mobile’s Lagniappe Weekly, and host of Mobile’s “The Jeff Poor Show” from 9 a.m.-12 p.m. on FM Talk 106.5.
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