Last week, prohibitions against sports gambling were removed by the U.S. Supreme Court. Some states are already jumping in.
Massachusetts legislative leaders expressed an interest in taking up the issue, but had different time tables for describing when it "would" or "could" come up for debate.
Matt Murphy, State House News Service: I guess you could say they're ready to start thinking about it. I don't know if they're ready to start dealing with it. You certainly did not get a sense of urgency from lawmakers on Monday.
Legislative leaders and Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker both expressed their desire to really dig into this and start taking a look at it, now that the Supreme Court has put this on their plate and it made it a legal option.
Other states have been waiting for this ruling to come down and have been ready to go for months, if not years.
Some states, including some in New England, had laws on the books already that if the Supreme Court ruled, as it did, it would immediately initiate the process to start implementing sports betting. And you’re likely to see it begin very quickly in places like New Jersey.
[Massachusetts] House Speaker Robert DeLeo and Senate President Harriette Chandler are saying that they want to look at both the pros and the cons. Obviously, there's a lure of revenue. The Massachusetts Gaming Commission has estimated somewhere between $9 and $60 million could be reaped by the state, which is not a huge amount of money in the grand scheme of a $40-plus billion budget. But it's also not anything to completely dismiss.
Carrie Healy, NEPR: Are they able to take that slow and measured approach because Massachusetts is still well ahead of the game, in terms of tax revenues, and the economy is fairly stable? Last month, the House-passed budget came in at $41.5 billion. The Senate proposed budget -- which they'll be dealing with this week -- comes in at $41.42 billion. What do you see as the most contentious areas of spending?
There’s really a lot of agreement between the branches on how they want to spend money. You're likely to see some spending added on the floor by the Senate during the debate this week. These two bills will likely come in at roughly the same total spending level.
There is going to be disagreement between the governor and the legislature at the end of the day, because of the way the legislature has chosen -- as they have in years past -- to leave a lot of accounts, such as snow and ice removal, funding for the sheriffs, funding for indigent criminal defense attorney -- all underfunded. They do this as a strategy to free up money to put into other areas of the budget. It gets supplemented throughout the fiscal year as revenues become available, and the exact caseloads are determined.
The governor has historically argued that this leaves the budget imbalanced at the very start of the fiscal year. He typically tends to veto this kind of language, to try and bring it back into the balance, in his view. This is probably going to be an issue this year.
Last month, the House passed a budget that had $63 million in tax revenues from recreational marijuana sales. Is that the same number that's used for revenue in the Senate budget?
It is. They're counting on the same amount of marijuana revenue from sales -- $63 million. This is not the full amount they expect to reap when the recreational marijuana industry is fully up and operational. They're counting on it to be phased in slowly as these retail pot shops open up, beginning this summer, and they're counting on a piece of that pie to balance next year's budget proposals.
Last week, California officials announced that their tax revenues are only coming in at about a third of what the state anticipated, now that they're five months into legalized adult marijuana sales. Is it too late in Massachusetts to revise those revenue projections?
It's certainly not too late. It could be amended on the floor when the Senate debates it this week, though I kind of think that that probably won't happen. Lawmakers do think they're being conservative with this estimate.
The impression is that they’re going to give this a go for now. But I think what's happening in California, and other states, bears watching.
