Since the U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling in the spring of 2018 that cleared the way for states to legalize sports gambling, 25 of them and the District of Columbia have done so.
Minnesota isn’t one of them.
This year, another half dozen are seriously considering some form of legalized sports betting, including New York and Texas.
Minnesota isn’t one of them.
That doesn’t mean supporters of legalized sports betting aren’t trying. They’re just not sure there’s much chance.
“I love Minnesota. I’ve lived here my whole life. I just don’t know why we have to be the 45th or 46th state to do everything,” said Rep. Pat Garofalo, R-Farmington, who has sponsored several bills to legalize sports betting since the court ruling. “Our government can’t do anything quickly. We couldn’t get rid of regulation for 3.2 beer. We just recently allowed Sunday liquor sales. It’s a perpetual unwillingness to let adults act like adults.”
Attempts to legalize and regulate sports betting have not only failed in the Minnesota Legislature, they haven’t even gotten a vote, either on the floor or in a committee. The only hearing on the bill came in a committee chaired by a sponsor, then-Senate Taxes Committee chair Roger Chamberlain, R-Lino Lakes.
[image_caption]State Rep. Pat Garofalo[/image_caption]
“The members of the Minnesota Indian Gaming Association remain opposed to any and all expansion of off-reservation gambling,” John McCarthy, Executive Director of the association, said in a statement.
Absent tribal interest, Gov. Tim Walz and DFL leaders in the Legislature haven’t shown much interest in the issue, though the governor said he is open to it if the Legislature wants to discuss it.
‘I just want to be better than Iowa’
By a 6-3 majority, the Supreme Court ruled in Murphy v. NCAA that Congress exceeded its authority by preventing states from legalizing and regulating sports betting. The case had been brought by New Jersey, which wanted to give a boost to its struggling Atlantic City casinos, and had tried a series of legal moves to end the federal ban against sports betting in all states except Nevada.
In the majority opinion, Justice Samuel Alito, Jr. wrote that Congress has the authority to pass legislation to regulate sports gambling itself. But if it decides not to, each state is free to do so, and many have.
Garofalo has been the main proponent in the Minnesota House. He says the issue isn’t financial, as some have suggested. The revenue to the state from taxation of sports betting would be measured in the tens of millions, not hundreds of millions. Instead, Garofalo sees it as part consumer protections, part closing off markets to black-market gambling and part letting Minnesotans do something they enjoy.
The bill he proposed last year, and is planning to re-introduce this year, would allow only tribal casinos to offer sports betting. There would also be no online or mobile betting, at least initially.
“States around us are legalizing it and the vast majority of Minnesotans want to see it happen,” Garofalo said. “It would provide consumer protections and allow law enforcement to focus on more important issues.”
But while revenue isn’t the main reason, or even a top reason, Garofalo said there is still some money that can come from it.“Thirty to $40 million may not seem like a lot of money, but it’s still a lot of money,” Garofalo said.
Sen. Karla Bigham of Cottage Grove said she is the only Senate DFLer who signed on to legalization bills last session. She will sponsor legislation [PDF] this session that attempts to be a compromise between Garofalo’s tribes-only legislation and a more-expansive legalization effort.
The bill, to be introduced this week, would create a new Sports Wagering Commission and allow tribal casinos and the state’s two race tracks to offer sports betting. Initially, it could be done only in person. After a year, betting would be allowed via websites or mobile apps connected to tribal casinos, and such betting could be done anywhere in the state, not just within the jurisdiction of tribal nations.
[image_caption]State Sen. Karla Bigham[/image_caption]
“Sports wagering is flagrantly done publicly by myself and others but it is not legal,” Bigham said. “So why criminalize it. Let’s shine some light on it, let’s put some parameters around it and if the state makes a buck or two along the way, good for us.”
But tax revenue is not a motivation, she said. “You don’t do legislation like legalizing sports wagering, legalizing marijuana, legalizing fireworks -— and I’m supportive of all those — to balance a budget,” she said.
As per Garofalo’s concern that the state will be 45th or 46th to act, Bigham said: “I don’t know if we want to be last,” she said. “I just want to be better than Iowa.” Iowa was the 11th state to legalize sports betting and has recently added mobile betting to its offerings.
[image_caption]Rep. Zack Stephenson[/image_caption]
“We obviously have a really packed agenda, between the pandemic and the budget, I think that makes it pretty challenging to take on a host of other issues,” Stephenson said. “My take would be that I think it’s probably not likely that we’ll do a lot on gaming unless there’s broad consensus among the stakeholders.”
Let adults be adults? Seems to me that is also an argument for legalized marijuana at age 21. Somehow I don’t expect Republicans to make the same argument. Isn’t not wearing a mask a big enough gamble for them?
Pat Garafalo supports legalizing marijuana.
So, who are the major -voice legislative opponents at this time ?
While I’m personally not a proponent of gambling in almost any form, I’m aware that people who can’t afford to do so throw their money away illegally every day.
“‘We obviously have a really packed agenda, between the pandemic and the budget, I think that makes it pretty challenging to take on a host of other issues,’ [Representative] Stephenson said.” What Peter’s article shows me more than anything else is yet another reason why Minnesotans should bite the policy and procedures bullet, move out of the 19th century and into the 21st in the form of a full-time legislature. The part-time legislature is a vestige of an era when agriculture was probably (I’m old, but not that old, so I wasn’t an eye witness to the 1870s to 1900 or so) was the only real industry in the state, thus the row of huge grain mills that used to stand along the Mississippi at St. Anthony Falls. Minnesota likely still has members of the state House and Senate who are farmers supporting their families via agriculture, but my hunch is that they’re few and far between. If the legislature met year-round, and legislators were paid a living wage as a result, the legislature wouldn’t be putting off issues like this so it could deal with other issues like budget and pandemic in an available time period that’s artificially constrained by a culture that no longer exists.
Maybe if we only had one legislative body to provide full time work to it would be easier to swallow?
Call it the Jesse Ventura Unicameral Act of 2021….
This article seems to have a perspective of Sports-Betting is great and good and needed, and these irrational groups: Anti-Gambling Legislators and Tribes in Minnesota. It’s a bit more complex than that, and there is no great or almighty argument for Sports-Betting, minus Sen. Bingham’s energy and drive for it but that’s just it, it’s a part of her legislative agenda and not many others.
This current legislature still has to decide whether or not to put a renewal of the State Lottery on the ballot in 2022. And if they do, they also have the question of where to reallocate the revenues from the lottery, we have the Heritage Fund now, so maybe it should be redirected from the DNR to MNDOT or MDE? This is going to be difficult with the mixed government we currently have.
There is another matter that needs some looking after and redesign too, which is Charitable Gaming. It is too centralized and tightly controlled by the state government which also had a bias against it in favor of the Lottery, just as it is biased against Tribal gaming. Charitable Gaming consists mainly of raffles, bingo, and pulltabs used for raising funds for PTAs, Churches, Cancer Patients, Local Conservation Projects, American Legion and VFW Posts, and the Lions/Eagles/Elks clubs’ service projects. Yet it has some of the toughest regulations and premium charges/fees for getting through the redtape, which is intentional as the Lottery and Casinos feel (irrationally) threatened by it. Before adding Sports-Betting, maybe we could devolve charitable gaming to local municipalities (cities of the third and fourth class included) and to counties that act on behalf of townships within their boundaries.
Now, I know that people will make the argument that Charitable Gaming, Tribal Casinos, and the Lottery are all separate issues; they are definitely dressed up to look that way by those in Saint Paul. However, they are interconnected in the underlying purpose of attempting to raise funds for good causes. Yet, what connects them, even more, is how they are played off of one another by Saint Paul. So maybe before we go done the road of another potential “Canterbury Downs” legislative calamity at the Capitol, we could look to improving or redressing what’s here first and then after, if a need is found for Sports-Betting we can look at the proposal at that time. (Which isn’t now.)
“I love Minnesota. I’ve lived here my whole life. I just don’t know why we have to be the 45th or 46th state to do everything”
What a spot-on quote.
I’ll keep this simple. I support the Native Tribes. If someone wants more gambling make it available through them. We owe it to them.
As usual in politics – follow the money.
What benefit do Minnesota residents get from having legalized sports betting in our state?
Having just read through Karla Bigham’s PDF, I am appreciative of the ideas she has put forward. I like her ideas, even though the last individual sport bet I made was 35 years ago. (I bet against the Vikes and won in the Les Steckel era.) I would not drive to a casino to make a bet, but I would bet online or by phone. If it is isolated at a casino, it will not work. The $10 bets are needed, not the $1000. Currently, there is a 15% rake on pulltabs. A 50% rake on scratch offs . 15-25% on horse bets. If the casino AND state will stop at 6 to 8% on sports bets, that would be the way to bet with an actual chance of long term winning.
You go Karla and Pat. Make my retirement less expensive.