Residents inwards Louisiana’s St. Tammany Parish will determine whether to clear a $250 gazillion casino resort inwards Slidell during the Oct 9 election.
After months of political jockeying, lobbying, and confrontational public meetings 'tween gambling casino proponents and spiritual opposition, the Louisiana Senate sanctioned House Bill 702 with a 23-14 vote. The House had earliest passed the legislating 63-28.
HB702 provides for a referendum inwards St. Tammany Parish regarding riverboat gaming. If a simple absolute majority decides to raise the longstanding forbidding on gambling, Peninsula Pacific Entertainment (P2E), a California-based cassino operator, would live cleared to go forward inwards edifice a quarter of a billion-dollar gaming holiday resort at Lakeshore Marina on Lake Pontchartrain.
The lowest clip St. Tammany voters weighed in on casino gambling was back up in 1996. Sixty-two percent of the vote rejected allowing a riverboat to amount to the area.
Referendum Wording
P2E decided not to reopen its DiamondJacks Casino inwards Bossier City after existence forced to temporarily shutter during the tallness of the COVID-19 pandemic. The companionship said the securities industry was no yearner attractive.
P2E began searching for a to a greater extent enticing area to carry on gaming, and pinpointed Slidell inward St. Tammany Parish. The ballot referendum testament read:
Shall gaming operations and activities authorised by the Pelican State Riverboat Economic Development and Gaming Control Act be authorized inwards St. Tammany Parish at a situation along those certain waterways in St. Tammany Parish along portions of Lake Pontchartrain that are constituent of the Lakeshore Marina set S and east of Interstate 10, Exit 261, and shall (Name of licensee approved past the LA Gaming Control Board) or the licensee’s successors and assigns be authorized to relocate from its stream location to the location inwards St. Tammany Parish described above, and to acquire on such location a gaming, hotel, and resort hotel performance all inwards accordance with the Louisiana Gaming Control Law, the Pelican State Gaming Control the LA Election Code, and other relevant constitutional and statutory authority?”
Before the referendum tin can make voters, LA Gov. Saint John the Apostle Bel Jonathan Edwards (D) must sign on HB702, which he says he will do.
P2E Lobbying
Long before the full general public still knew Peninsula Pacific would appear to relocate its Bossier City gaming certify to Slidell, P2E contracted 19 lobbyists inward Baton Rouge to safari on its behalf.
Penn National Gaming and Boyd Gaming, which control casinos in Pelican State and Mississippi, also sent lobbyists to the Baton Rouge chapiter to impulse lawmakers to pooh-pooh allowing a cassino in Slidell. But a legal age of tell lawmakers opted to instead allow the people in St. Tammany decide.
The legislative exertion was not without controversy. The wife of Sen. Gary David Smith (D-Norco), the country politico who roll the tiebreaking vote to liberty chit the Slidell casino referendum while in the Senate Judiciary Committee, lobbied on behalf of P2E. But John Smith said he was incognizant of her current clients, but still if he had known, that would not hold wedged his vote.