FALMOUTH — The debate over gambling in Maine could resume Tuesday as advocates for a combined casino-racetrack in southern Maine try to revive a bill rejected by the Senate by a narrow margin last week.

On Monday, several dozen veterans and representatives of Maine’s struggling harness racing industry urged lawmakers to support the measure, which would create a competitive bidding process for a “resort-style casino” in either York County or Cumberland County. In some versions of the bill, the casino would need approval only from voters within the host county. A version up for reconsideration in the Senate on Tuesday would require a statewide referendum.

“We just want to be able to survive as an industry,” said Linwood Higgins, legislative liaison with the Maine Harness Horsemen’s Association. “It is part of our agricultural heritage.”

But the LePage administration is on the record as opposing an expansion beyond the casinos already operating in Bangor and Oxford. And passage of the bill would likely further inflame tensions between the state and members of Maine’s American Indian tribes, who saw their own measure to allow a gambling facility on tribal lands in Aroostook County or Washington County defeated in the Legislature this session.

In September 2014, a report commissioned by the Legislature determined there was market capacity for additional casino gambling in Maine and recommended that any facility be located in the southern end of the state within close proximity of Interstate 95. The report, from Atlantic City-based WhiteSand Gaming, also said the state could support a modest casino – limited to 250 slot machines and 10 table games – near the Maine-Canada border in Washington County or Aroostook County in addition to the southern Maine facility.

Revenues from any southern Maine casino would be carved up in a variety of ways depending on the version of the bill, L.D. 1280, although all of the versions considered by the Legislature would provide some funding to host communities as well as to education programs, Maine’s harness racing industry, and to gambling addiction programs. One version would have earmarked up to $14 million a year to support veterans programs in the state, although it was unclear Monday whether the veterans programs would be included in the version likely to see action Tuesday on the Senate floor.

‘A GODSEND’ FOR VETERANS

Chick Cicciotti, a veteran from Topsham who frequently advocates at the State House, called the version of the bill providing funding to veterans “a godsend.”

“It’s an opportunity for the veterans of the state of Maine to have some financial independence,” Cicciotti said at an event at the American Legion Hall in Falmouth. “We are not going to have to go to Augusta every year or every two years to beg people to help the veterans of the state of Maine. But this bill does more than help veterans. It’s a people’s bill. It helps the horsemen of the state of Maine. It helps the harness racing industry in the state of Maine. It helps the off-track betting parlors in the state of Maine.”

Opponents have questioned the need for another gambling facility in Maine, however, and have predicted that a third casino would only “cannibalize” the business of the casinos in Bangor and Oxford.

A version of the bill passed the House on June 23 on a vote of 83-62 but was rejected in the Senate, 20-15. A different version of the bill failed, 18-17, in a vote in the Senate later in the day. Supporters have been working since then to flip several votes in the Senate. But supporters would need to pick up considerable support in both the House and the Senate to override a veto by Gov. Paul LePage.

Maine voters first approved the creation of two combined racetrack-slots casinos – often called racinos – in Bangor and in Scarborough in 2003. Hollywood Slots opened across Bangor’s Main Street from the harness racing track and fairgrounds two years later. However, Scarborough voters failed to approve the southern Maine casino by the deadline. Statewide voters approved a casino with slot machines and table games in the western Maine town of Oxford in 2010. Penobscot County voters approved a countywide referendum allowing table games at Hollywood Slots in 2011.

Kevin Miller can be contacted at 791-6312 or at:

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