House Bill 1835 is one of the more significant bills that passed this year. It allows the two horse racing tracks to install up to 2,000 slot machines at each facility. The tracks are Indiana Downs in Shelbyville and Hoosier Park in Anderson. (Just an aside, I recalled that Centaur Inc. was involved with Hoosier Park and recalled an article a couple years back about the company’s cozy lobbying relationships with Sen. Drozda and Rep. Frizzell. Both of them voted against this bill.)
The bill does a number of things.
[tags]HB1835-2007, gambling, laws, taxation[/tags]
The 1% is a subsidy to French Lick, which expires in five years.
The riverboat subsidy which currently goes to the horsemen will now be redirected to the property tax relief fund.
Thanks for the explanation.
Legalize gambling across the board, or criminalize it across the board – let’s not continue these special favor laws.
Let’s legalize it, state-wide, and allow other communities to benefit from the gaming industry too, not just cherry picked companies. Then, like Nevada, drop our state income tax. Or, use the extra income to revitalize our state – say by becoming the alternative energy research capital of the world.
Its ridiculous to me that we can see the morality of allowing the race tracks to get their slots, but take them out of the hands of local organizations raising money for charity. Or bust big poker games down in Indy that aren’t harming the general public. Either its right or wrong, and we need to pick one set of rules statewide.