That’ll just about do it for gambling this session

Sen. Carona calls the chances “slim”, but it sounds like slim just left town to me.

[Sen. John] Carona, chairman of the Senate’s Business and Commerce Committee, said last week he expected to vote his sweeping gambling bill out of his committee Tuesday. But the morning committee hearing came and went, and Carona declined to bring the bill up for a vote.

Carona’s fellow senators told him they didn’t want to take a vote on the controversial topic if it doesn’t have much of a chance, especially in the Texas House, Carona said.

State Rep. John Kuempel, R-Seguin, agreed that there is not much of an appetite for gambling in the House this year.

“I don’t think it has a great chance over here,” said Kuempel, who supports expanded gambling to bring additional revenue to Texas. “It’s challenged in the 83rd legislative session in the Texas House.”

[…]

Even if his legislation fails this session, Carona said a lot has been accomplished in the past several weeks. Notably, two often clashing pro-gambling interests — those seeking slot machines at racetracks and those advocating casinos — have worked well together on a broad gambling bill.

“Time is always your enemy in a legislative session,” Carona said, adding that he is not ready to pronounce gambling dead just yet.

Sure sounds dead to me, but as always, you never know. There will almost certainly be a special session to deal with school finance next year, however, and barring anything unexpected from the Supreme Court the Lege will need to find more revenue for the schools, so expect the subject to be on the front burner. Having the cover of a court order sufficed to get the business margins tax created, and it could well do the same for some kind of gambling measure. If nothing else, we’re going to have to pay for Rick Perry’s irresponsible tax cuts somehow. So don’t bury expanded gambling too deeply just yet.

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