By Tom Latek
Kentucky Today
Don’t expect expanded gaming to come up as a new revenue source, even if the Senate doesn’t go along with tax hikes approved by the House as part of the biennial budget legislation this week.
House Bill 366, the revenue legislation accompanying the budgets for the Executive, Judicial and Legislative Branches of government, includes three money-generating provisions: raising the cigarette tax 50-cents per pack, adding a 25-cent per dose for opioids to distributors, and eliminating the $10 tax credit on income tax returns.
Senate President Robert Stivers, R-Manchester, responded to those provisions in the revenue bill.
Kentucky House (Photo by Tom Latek, Kentucky Today
“In the form that it’s in, I think it will be very difficult,” he said. “Some of those elements may be involved in a comprehensive package, but I don’t think those, as one-off taxes, would be something we would be willing to consider.”
He added the tobacco tax would be shrinking over time, so it wouldn’t have the revenue to cover expenditures in future years.
House Speaker Pro Tem David Osborne, R-Prospect, said there has been some discussion of expanded gaming. “While there has been some support, it hasn’t been illustrated to me that there is sufficient support in the body to move it,” he said.
When Democrats controlled the House, expanded gaming legislation was introduced several times over the years, but never called for a vote because they knew its fate in the Senate. Osborne was asked if that was the case again this year.
“I filed the bill several years and they would never give me a hearing on it,” Osborne said. “It’s one of those things where there has to be broad support for it pretty broadly to move it.”
Stivers also said expanded gaming is a non-starter, one reason being it dries up discretionary dollars.
“When you think about the child’s college fund that, all of a sudden, winds up missing. Or you want to buy a new washer or dryer and you don’t have the dollars to do it,” he said. “You want to do home repairs and you don’t have the dollars to do it. If you want to do entertainment of other types, you don’t have the ability to do it. It has an adverse effect on communities.”
Stivers said he would need proof that it would work as a revenue source.
“If somebody can show me differently, I would say yes,” he said. “But what we want to look at is policy that has a synergistic effect that grows communities where everybody can make a dollar and more dollars get spread within the system. That’s why I don’t believe in gaming as a fix-it, a silver bullet or anything else, because I think it is a zero-sum game.”
