State Rep. Sean Eberhart, R-Shelbyville, blasted the House Ways and Means Committee's revisions to a gaming bill designed to support the state's gaming industry combat ever-increasing competition from neighboring states.
Senate Bill 528, which passed the Senate in February, seemed to hit the skids once it arrived at the House.
Last month the House Public Policy Committee removed the live gaming table provision and Tuesday the amended bill passed out of the key fiscal House committee with a 15-6 vote with even more revisions.
The amended bill now headed to the full House also mandates the Shelbyville and Anderson racinos pay $10 million to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and other motorsports businesses.
"The concept is just the worst public policy that I've ever seen," Eberhart said Wednesday.
"It goes against everything that we talked about trying to help the gaming industry," he said, noting the provision was the "most egregious example of government overreach that I've seen in my seven years here."
Several committee members made statements Tuesday before they supported the bill, he said, and reiterated their concerns with the language about the motorsports industry.
"But they wanted to keep the bill moving and to take it to the House for consideration," Eberhart said.
The sentiment was reminiscent of comments Eberhart heard during discussions in the public policy committee when the live gaming tables feature was removed under pressure from Gov. Mike Pence.
Pence considers the addition of live gaming tables an expansion of gaming in the state.
"I was told that the bill would die if it was left in," Eberhart told a group of Shelby County constituents last week at a legislative discussion luncheon.
He remains hopeful that discussions at the full House and subsequent conference committee will remove the $10 million motorsports condition and reinstate the live gaming tables.
Eberhart didn't rule out the possibility the live gaming tables aspect might find its way into another bill.
"I'm disappointed but I still hold out hope that we'll have a chance to get the bill to a better spot," he said.
Before the bill passed out of the fiscal committee, Eberhart said he was among those who successfully campaigned to remove verbiage requiring the racinos pay $3 million to anti-smoking programs.
"There again, you scratch your head," he said. "Where's the connection between the racinos and that program? There is none."
Eberhart considers it unfortunate that the bill, which initially benefited the state with increased revenue and jobs, has turned into little more than an opportunity to raid the racinos to fund special projects.
"The people of Shelby County should be furious that they're treating our largest employer as an ATM," he said.
And he considers it unfair legislators are willing to impede racinos when both Anderson and Shelbyville have recently recovered from bankruptcies.
"It seems like we continually pick at the racinos," he said. "Since Day 1 they've yet to get a fair shake."
Indianapolis-based Centaur Gaming LLC is waging its own battle to return the live gaming tables provision to the bill.
Chief Operating Officer Jim Brown testified during the House Public Policy Committee stating the company wasn't looking for a handout or a bailout but asking for the ability to create hundreds of new jobs in the state.
The company has placed a video on the Indiana Grand and Hoosier Park casino Facebook and Twitter pages meant to answer guests' questions about the issues.
Live gaming tables create more than 600 jobs in Anderson and Shelbyville, Brown said, not to mention jobs created by related construction and other jobs.
Without the live gaming tables, opportunities for capital investment and increased revenue for the state will be lost, he said.
"This issue represents one of the most significant job creation opportunities we've seen in many years," he said.
Brown disagrees that adding live gaming tables is an expansion of gaming, as Pence proposes. Both facilities have all the live table games found at the state's riverboat casinos. The racinos will not be adding new games but adding personnel to man the tables of existing ones.
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