Against a backdrop in which one Missouri senator lectured his peers about how the body was facing a “Darth Vader moment” where the chamber was Anakin Skywalker and had the opportunity to pick between good and evil, the hopes for legal sports betting died for the second consecutive session in the Show-Me State.
One day after senators tried to force a decision between cutting personal property taxes and legalizing sports betting, Sen. Denny Hoskins laid over SB 92, a bill that earlier this week became a political football. In the House, Rep. Dan Houx tacked legal sports betting onto Hoskins’ Missouri Rural Workforce Development Act, and the House sent it back to the Senate.
The move forced Hoskins, who has long wanted to tie legal wagering to the legalization of video lottery terminals, to choose whether or not to move SB 92 forward. In the end, he chose not to as the Senate devolved into a series of diatribes, lectures, and finger pointing until it mercifully went into recess just before noon local time.
The Senate will reconvene later Friday for its last few hours before the 2023 session adjourns at 6 p.m.
“We can either have chaos, which we have had for the last few days or years, or a respectful, organized situation,” Senate Floor Leader Cindy O’Laughlin told her peers. “What is happening is that we are having senators bring to the floor legislation that they cannot get passed, and in retaliation, they are hanging up the Senate for hours.”
Procedural errors and other nonsense
O’Laughlin’s words appeared to fall on deaf ears, as Sen. Bill Eigel mocked her use of the phrase “political theater” in his long-winded Star Wars reference.
Prior to Eigel’s lecture, procedure had been broken on the Senate floor, setting chaos into motion. Eigel requested to be recognized on the floor earlier in the day, but Senate President Caleb Rowden failed to oblige. Rowden later apologized, noted his error, and gave Eigel the opportunity to speak. But Rowden also pointed to Hoskins and Eigel as the reason that both the personal property tax and legal wagering issues failed this session.
I was wrong not to recognize @BillEigel, and I took ownership of that publicly on the Senate floor.
Eigel and @DLHoskins need to take ownership of the fact they killed personal property tax cuts and sports betting in Missouri today. Every other person in the chamber is ready to… https://t.co/1EIpToAdN8
— Caleb Rowden (@calebrowden) May 12, 2023
Eigel on Thursday evening was the architect of what appeared to be the second filibuster attempt of the session around wagering when he cracked open a Ronald Reagan biography and began reading Chapter 4. Eigel had read the first three chapters on the Senate floor in April, when SB 30 was up for discussion.
SB 30 was a standalone sports betting bill that Hoskins attempted to amend by adding authorization of VLTs. The Senate killed that amendment, leading Hoskins to lead a filibuster attempt that included the Reagan biography and a lecture on the history of the B-52, causing one senator to refer to the body as “idiots.”
Whatever the procedural issues, personality conflicts, or political loyalties, the net result is yet another failed attempt to legalize wagering in Missouri. Hoskins pre-filed the first Missouri sports betting bill in 2018. In nearly every effort, he has linked legal wagering to VLTs, which local casinos staunchly oppose. The legislature has repeatedly shown Hoskins that it will not vote to legalize the gray machines, though he has continued to push for it.
Seven of Missouri’s eight border states have legal sports betting since Kentucky lawmakers legalized in late March. Of those states, Arkansas, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, and Tennessee are live. Kentucky’s law becomes effective June 1, at which point the regulator will begin promulgating rules, while Nebraska’s regulator is in the process of developing rules. Oklahoma does not have legal betting.
Missouri’s professional sports teams say they are considering sending the issue to the voters via initiative. The deadline to get on the 2023 ballot has already passed, so the teams would be looking at an initiative for 2024, which is the same year Hoskins will term-limit out, changing the landscape in the Senate.
The bigger question is whether stakeholders or lawmakers will try again next year or choose to wait for a new playing field in 2025.
