ATLANTA – Supporters of the legalization of the game in Georgia have not long to push their cause through the finish line during the session of the General Assembly of 2025.
The first element of legislation on sports betting to strike the chamber of representatives of the State this year was presented on Friday with less than a week remaining before the day of the crossing – the deadline for the legislation to adopt the Georgia House or the Senate to stay alive for the year.
Meanwhile, a senatorial committee voted on Thursday a wider measure aimed at bringing both sports betting and casinos in the Peach state.
The rejection of offers to legalize the game in Georgia has become a standard operational procedure in the General Assembly. While 39 states have sports betting in one form or another, efforts for sports betting is legalized in Georgia have been looking for for years.
A long -standing legal dispute as to whether a constitutional amendment is necessary to provide sports betting here has hampered legislative efforts in recent years. The legislators have also disagreed on the quantity of products from Paris Tax and to spend this money on the hope of hope funded by the Lottery in Georgia and pre-maternal programs, health care, economic development or initiatives aimed at reducing poverty in low-income areas.
A key discussion subject for supporters of sports betting is that it is so omnipresent throughout the country – including the neighboring states of Tennessee, North Carolina and Florida – that the Georgians go elsewhere to place bets, depriving the treasure of the state of a source of lucrative income.
“Tens of thousands of people leave Georgia each month to play,” Senator Carden Summers, R-Cordele, said on Thursday, who sponsors a constitutional amendment to the Senate aimed at legalizing sports betting and casinos, to members of the Senate committee regulated by industries.
State representative Marcus Wiedower, R-Watkinsville, presents a constitutional amendment to the Chamber on Friday which would be limited to online sports betting. The resolution of the 450 room recovered bipartite support, with 47 republican members of the Chamber and 10 democrats who signed themselves as a coparracés.
“We have never seen this level of support before in the house for this resolution,” said Wiedower. “It gives me great confidence in its success when we head for the last month of (the) session.”
Wiedower sponsored legislation two years ago which would have legalized sports betting by law rather than a constitutional amendment. But he said he was going with a constitutional amendment this year.
“To avoid the legal argument, the only way to follow is the constitutional amendment,” he said.
Summers said that the advantage of looking for a constitutional amendment is that it would give the voters of Georgia a chance to decide on the question of a referendum on the level of the State. He cited a straw survey among republican primary voters last May who found more than 80% in favor of planning a state -of -the -state vote on the opportunity to authorize the “game” in Georgia.
“This amendment does not force anyone to play,” said Summers. “This simply allows Georgia voters to have their say.”
Summers put a different turn to his proposal not presented in the previous versions of the legalized game: he also calls the 2 billion dollars for the benefit of the product between the 159 counties of Georgia. In this way, the advantages of casinos would not only go in the communities where they are.
“It is real money that would help infrastructure, economic development and essential services, especially in rural Georgia where they need it,” he said. “The dispersion of these funds uniformly is the only fair way to do so.”
The resolution of the house of Wiedower plans to devote most of the benefits to the Georgia pre-Kinde program.
Parties of the game product in the measures of Summers and Wiedower would be towards programs to help players in problems avoid becoming dependent.
Problems are among the consequences of the legalization of sports betting and / or casinos that representatives of religious groups have cited over the years in the game legislation opposing.
Mike Griffin, representative of public affairs of the Georgia Baptist Mission Board, said that the “social costs” of the legalized game prevail over tax revenue that the State would increase bettors.
“Casinos increase the trafficking in human beings, drug trafficking and other crimes,” added Paul Smith, executive director of the Christian organization of public policies Citizen Impact.
The Summers and Wiedower push autonomous constitutional amendments without the addition of distinct “empowering” bills, generally longer laws which indicate how sports betting or casinos would operate in Georgia. They reason that it is useless to work to develop such detailed measures if the voters defeated legalized games of chance during the ballot boxes.
This story Available via a news partnership with Capitol Beat, an initiative by the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.