The online gambling package of legislations finds the officials on the wane of their session and the lack of time may impose the need to postpone the gambling issue for the next year, even though the whole affair promised “happy end” for the gambling industry.
Illinois has struggled to liberalize its online gambling industry for long enough. When it finally managed to place the matter on the table of discussion, it appeared that the lack of time will play a practical joke to the state.
The end of the legislative session in Illinois fired a competition between the lawmakers, who want to pass their bills through the House and the Senate. The online gambling bill marched through the Senate a month ago, when it received a green light and even more – a great support. This encouraged the proponents of the bill, giving them hopes that the package of legislations will succeed also in the House and appear on the Governor Bruce Rauner’s desk for signature.
But all the hopes started to limp and even fade away, as the committee meetings did not manage to mark any progress on the matter. Despite all the talks and discussions, it is a long and clumsy process to fit in the time limit. The latest meeting took place on Wednesday, 28th June, but the online gambling bill did not move forwards.
John Pappas, an executive of Poker Players Alliance, was among the attendees of these meeting. After the meeting, he posted a comment in the social media that the whole process and idea behind it went wrong, but there is still hope that the question may be raised once again in a couple of weeks. This was the silver lining of the cloud for all the proponents of the bill.
In fact, the officials were eager to move forward the matter, but the process needed to be stalled due to the lack of time. State Governor Bruce Rauner even suggested that the legislative session might be extended, giving another chance for the online gambling bill to appear on the horizon and enter the lawbooks.
In fact, the reason why Gov. Rauner is pushing to enact the bill is the situation in the state. Illinois faces some financial difficulties and gaps in the budget. Thus, the fastest the bill is adopted and added to the state’s legal code, the better. In that way, the state will not waste even a minute, but it will immediately start to deal with the financial troubles.
Practically, there is still some more time until the legislative session is officially closed, but it is highly probable for the matter to be shelved for the next year. Illinois will open its market for online casino operators to enter, as the Senate already gave the go ahead light to the bill, but it is still not clear when exactly this will happen.
