INDIANAPOLIS | Indiana's riverboat casinos could be asked to pony up for property-tax relief when the General Assembly returns to session next year, a lawmaker said Wednesday.
"I can't imagine that won't come up in some context," state Rep. Scott Pelath, D-Michigan City, said. "Within the context of property taxes, I don't know what's not on the table."
A legislative panel grilled Ernie Yelton, executive director of the
Indiana Gaming Commission, for more than two hours Wednesday. Afterward, Pelath said the commission should have asked the Legislature before allowing Horseshoe Casino in Hammond and Argosy Casino in southern Indiana to move ahead with "massive" expansion projects.
Indiana riverboats had been governed by U.S. Coast Guard construction standards. But, Yelton said, the Coast Guard refused to assume oversight of the Horseshoe and Argosy expansions and recently told the state it would stop regulating all gambling riverboats.
Lawmakers gave the Gaming Commission permission to write new construction standards in 2005, but they did not lift a ban on gambling barges. The Argosy and Horseshoe projects, Pelath complained, "certainly fit my definitions of barge."
Horseshoe General Manager Rick Mazer said the 350,000-square-foot vessel under construction on
Hammond Marina will allow the casino to more than double the size of its gaming floor, add more than 1,000 slot machines and more than 40 card tables.
"Usually when we grant new privileges, we demand things in return for the public good," Pelath said.
In the spring, lawmakers proposed fees that would have cost Horseshoe more than $30 million to move ahead with its $485 million project. And legislators expect to be inundated with property tax relief requests when they convene in January.
"I think every session Hammond and other gaming cities are going to have play defense," Hammond Mayor Thomas McDermott Jr. said after Wednesday's hearing. "I'm ready. We're always playing defense."
Indiana's 11 casinos already pay nearly $1 billion a year in taxes and local economic development subsidies, but a spokesman said the industry won't be surprised if lawmakers go after more next year.
"We're always a target," said Mike Smith, president of the Indiana Casino Association. "In large part, the legislative process looks at us as probably the lowest-hanging, juiciest fruit available."