Two versions of sports betting bill are moving in NC legislature: Here’s how they differ

Two bills to legalize sports betting in North Carolina moved forward Tuesday, with bipartisan support as well as bipartisan opposition.

Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper has previously said North Carolina should legalize it, and last year the Republican-led N.C. Senate passed a bill to do just that.

Senate Bill 688 went nowhere in the N.C. House for months in August as it faced opposition from Christian groups on the right and social justice advocates on the left, in addition to several legal concerns.

But it resurfaced Tuesday, when the bill was given a committee hearing and passed with a 6-3 vote. There was one abstention.

One of the opponents was Raleigh Democratic Rep. Abe Jones, a former Wake County judge who said he worried about what would happen if more people become addicted to gambling.

“I saw on the bench, for 17 years, what can happen to people who are addicts to drugs,” he said. “I know there are some people in our society who are addicts to gambling. Many of them can’t afford to gamble, and yet they do gamble, and they hurt their families, and hurt themselves.”

Rep. Pricey Harrison, a Guilford County Democrat, also opposed the bill. Harrison said she wasn’t persuaded by the notion that online sports betting would raise meaningful revenue for the state, and said the “social costs” of gambling were “significant.”

“It’s a predatory, regressive form of financing,” Harrison said. “We know from our lottery experience that the highest number of ticket purchases are in the highest poverty rate areas of the state. It’s just very troubling to me that we are continuing to consider this as a revenue raiser.”

New sports betting bill introduced

The committee also approved a second sports betting bill Tuesday, which included several important changes to the original bill. The vote was 6-3 again, with one abstention.

If enacted, the new version of Senate Bill 38 would:

▪ Nearly double the amount of taxes sports betting companies would have to pay, from 8% to 14%, and raise licensure fees on companies that want to be allowed to operate in North Carolina.

▪ Double the amount of money set aside for publicly funded gambling addiction help, from $1 million to $2 million.

▪ Add horse racing as permissible, but ban betting on amateur sports. That includes the Olympics, but not college athletics, which would still be open for wagering.

▪ Fix the language in a section about special funds that could be used as financial incentives to lure sports tournaments here, since the original language inadvertently excluded NASCAR from getting any of that money.

“We inadvertently left NASCAR out ... and in North Carolina that is a very bad thing,” said Kinston Republican Sen. Jim Perry, a sponsor of both bills.

Time crunch sets up two paths forward

Both bills are now on track to potentially be voted on in the House late this week.

The legislature typically amends a bill and passes only the new version. But the committee on Tuesday passed both the old version of a bill and a newer version with changes. Lawmakers are facing a self-imposed time crunch, as leaders have said they want the 2022 session to be done by the end of June.

If the old version of the bill passes, then it would go directly to Cooper for his signature, because it has already passed the Senate. But if the newer bill with the changes also passes, it would have to go back to the Senate for more debate.

With less than two weeks left in June, however, it’s unclear whether that leaves enough time for the bill to pass before the date that legislative leaders were hoping to be able to leave Raleigh — especially if the new changes draw opposition in the Senate.

Both SB 688 and SB 38 are scheduled to be heard next in the House Finance Committee, on Wednesday morning. They’re also listed as possible items on the agenda of a Wednesday afternoon meeting of the House Rules Committee, which would be the final stop before consideration by the full chamber.

That could set up votes on the House floor as soon as later this week.

For more North Carolina government and politics news, listen to the Under the Dome politics podcast from The News & Observer and the NC Insider. You can find it at https://campsite.bio/underthedome or wherever you get your podcasts.