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Another gambling bill has faltered and failed in the Alabama Legislature.
While I’m not completely convinced that gambling is a dead issue for the 2025 legislative session – we’ve seen the issue rise, zombie-like, from the grave many times before, and with far less than a month to go – the first few shovels of dirt have definitely landed on the coffin. And that, of course, leads us to the inevitable next step in the annual gambling-got-oh-so-close process.
The blame game.
It’s the time when those who wanted our lawmakers to finally pass meaningful legislation that taxes and regulates gaming, putting Alabama on a level playing field with all of the states around us and shutting down the ridiculous amount of illegal gaming happening all over the state, try to figure out who they want to blame for it all falling apart one more year.
To be fair and less flippant, it’s easy to understand voters’ anger over this. It’s utterly stupid the way this state’s leaders continue to treat gambling – as if it’s not happening all over the state and ignoring the money we’re losing and the problems we could solve with it. Voters have made it abundantly clear that they want to change that, and yet, it never seems to happen.
So, we need someone to blame for that, some folks at which to direct this anger. Allow me to help. Here are the top three people to blame for gambling failing.
- The Alabama Legislature.
- The Alabama Legislature.
- The Alabama Legislature.
That’s the list.
The men and women who you elect to office in this state bear the responsibility for this failure. And them alone.
You can’t blame it on the Poarch Creeks. Or on the dog track owners. Or on the church groups. Or even on the anti-gaming special interest groups.
In poll after poll after poll over the last three years, passing gambling legislation – and specifically gambling that benefits education and health care expansion – was either the number one or number two issue consistently. You told these people you elected what you expected out of them and they failed to get it done.
They managed to shove a gas tax through. They pushed school “choice” down our throats. They killed the overtime tax break.
None of those things were even remotely as popular as gambling. All of them were complicated and controversial. Somehow, this bunch of yahoos who just can’t find common ground on gambling got those things done.
So, they can do it. They’re choosing not to. And it’s no one else’s fault.
That includes the interested parties in this debate.
For the life of me, I will never understand why gambling entities, such as dog track owners or the Poarch Band of Creek Indians, are viewed as responsible for this legislation failing. That’s especially true of late, since both groups have been mostly on board with the proposed legislation.
But even if they weren’t – even if PCI, for example, was raising absolute hell over a proposed bill – its passage would still be up to the elected lawmakers, whose job it is to do what’s best for the state and honor the wishes of the majority of voters.
Those dog track owners and PCI are doing what every business owner in this state does when it comes to legislation potentially affecting their businesses – they’re lobbying for their best interests. That’s how this whole process works.
I don’t hear y’all criticizing doctors or pharmacists or automakers for showing up to the legislature and advocating for their businesses. No one utters a peep about insurance companies lobbying.
Those groups spend millions every year lobbying lawmakers. And not once have they ever proposed anything that hurt their businesses or made them less money.
So, why do y’all expect the folks involved with gambling to act so differently?
The simple fact is this: If gambling truly is a dead issue for 2025, it didn’t die because special interests or dog track owners or PCI killed it. It died because, once again, the people you elected – specifically, the Republicans in the Alabama Senate – failed to honor the wishes of Alabama voters. They failed to do their jobs. They failed to do what’s best for the state.
Blame them.
