(Washington Post) — Raising taxes and parking fines are the traditionally irksome ways that local governments generate desperately needed revenue. Not the District government, that hotbed of fiscal innovation. Try blackjack, Texas hold ’em and five-card stud. A D.C. council member is proposing that the city legalize and promote online poker and fantasy sports gambling […]
(AP) — Illinois lawmakers are taking a new look at more gambling as a way to reduce the state’s massive budget deficit. Lawmakers have talked for years about adding new casinos or putting slot machines at racetracks, but the proposals have always fallen apart. But with Illinois facing a roughly $15 billion deficit, the issue […]
(Crain’s) — The Illinois Gaming Board has pushed the restart button to launch video gambling statewide. Six weeks after terminating a previously awarded contract, state regulators are once again seeking bids on a central communications system to monitor some 60,000 video gambling terminals expected to be installed at more than 10,000 taverns and other locations […]
(Crain’s) — Illinois gambling regulators terminated an estimated $89-million video gambling system contract awarded just one month ago to Scientific Games Corp. after a losing bidder complained that the state miscalculated the price of its bid. The Illinois Gaming Board plans to rebid the contract for the data network and central computer system that will […]
(NYT) — The cash-starved state government’s plan to generate hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenue a year through video gambling is running behind schedule. Officials originally said video gambling, which lawmakers legalized last year, would begin by the end of the year. “Nobody has been licensed yet,” Gene O’Shea, a spokesman for the […]
(NYT) — New York City’s first casino may open as soon as next year, and for the state the timing could not be better: it is expected to generate as much as $1.5 million a day for the severely depleted state treasury, as well as an upfront payment to Albany of $380 million. Read More…
(NYT) — After nearly a decade of false starts, squabbling and investigations, Gov. David A. Paterson and legislative leaders have approved a deal to bring casino gambling to New York City. The agreement this week, among the governor and the leaders of the State Senate and State Assembly, gives Genting New York, a subsidiary of the largest […]
(Bloomberg) — The New York Racing Association Inc., operator of the Aqueduct, Belmont and Saratoga horse tracks, faces insolvency in 2011 without revenue from long- delayed electronic slot machines, New York Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli said. State officials disqualified all bids but a Malaysian casino operator’s last week to develop an electronic slot- machine parlor, called […]
(NYT) — The New York City Off-Track Betting Corporation — burdened by its unique blend of politics, bureaucracy and horse racing interests — has long excelled at finding new ways to burn through the millions of dollars that pour under its tellers’ windows each year. And even with the parlors on their deathbeds, the last […]