CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa (KCRG) – State lawmakers who oppose a Cedar Rapids casino are working against the clock.
If state lawmakers pass a moratorium before February 6th, it wouldn’t matter what the commission decides afterwards regarding a license.
Lawmakers in both the House and Senate are deciding if they’ll ban any new casinos for the next five years, but they only have two weeks to pass a moratorium.
If state lawmakers want to pass a casino moratorium before February 6th they’ve got a lot of hurdles to jump through.
A moratorium starts in a subcommittee. It then moves to a full committee and a chamber floor for a vote. If it passes one chamber, it starts the process over again in the opposite one. It has to pass the Iowa Senate and House, and how long that process takes can vary from bill to bill.
“I also don’t know, I don’t think any of us know what its chances are in the senate. Obviously it did get through the house and get a vote last session, but there’s tons of new members, especially in the Republican caucus,” said state lawmaker Sami Scheetz, who represents Cedar Rapids.
He said because a casino is not a partisan issue, it’s hard to predict how the legislature will handle a moratorium. Meanwhile, House Speaker Pat Grassley signaled support for the bill in the house
“We’ve been clear in our position of it, but I also don’t think that if the bill were to go over to the senate, my expectation wouldn’t be us just passing a bill and it was dead on arrival. That’s not my expectation. I’d be hopeful they’d at least give it a consideration,” Grassley said.
If the moratorium passes through the house and the senate it would end on the Governor’s desk, where she would get the final say.
If the bill doesn’t make it through any of these steps by February 6th, the Iowa Racing and Gaming commission would have the choice to give the Linn County Gaming Association a license.
Scheetz said if Linn County does get a license, he expects legal challenges to revoke it.
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