Gatekeeper calls it a ‘heavy lift’

Back in April, state Sen. Liz Mathis sat at her desk in the Iowa Senate watching a live online feed of the Racing and Gaming Commission's vote on a casino license for Cedar Rapids.

'I watched it go down and I said ‘Oh ... no,'” she recalled after a news conference Tuesday touting a legislative push to revive those casino hopes. 'And I turned around and said ‘We didn't get our gaming license.' And there were a number of senators who stood up and cheered. What I didn't realize is not everybody was feeling the same way I was about a free marketplace.”

That's the Iowa Senate where Mayor Ron Corbett and his local legislative allies hope to launch a bill that would put the state's first smoke-free casino in downtown Cedar Rapids. The measure also would double gaming revenue shared with non-casino counties, set a 10-year cap on licenses and provide a tax break to casinos on their marketing activities. Half of that tax cut would go to casinos' local non-profits.

Mathis backs the bill. Sen. Wally Horn, D-Cedar Rapids, and Sen. Dan Zumbach, R-Ryan, will be its lead sponsors. Tuesday's media event was jammed with local leaders.

But local support only gets you so far at the Statehouse. It brings you to the gates of the Senate State Government Committee, where all gambling legislation is assigned for possible action. And the gatekeeper is the committee's chairman, Sen. Jeff Danielson, D-Cedar Falls.

'I would call the proposal creative,” said Danielson, who met with the mayor this fall to discuss the plan.

'Some ideas are viable. The one issue that is very difficult is asking 150 legislators to vote on siting a casino. And that's obviously what the mayor wants the most in the proposal.

'I won't be a complete no,” he said. 'As a committee chair, we'll allow them to offer the idea, see if there's any support broadly in the Legislature and then go from there. My gut tells me it's going to be a heavy lift.”

Danielson expects the Iowa Gaming Association, which lobbies on behalf of Iowa's casino cartel, to oppose much, and probably all, of the proposal. And he is extremely uncomfortable with setting the precedent of having lawmakers sidestep the commission and license a casino.

But he said there is another possible route. Lawmakers could create a new smoke-free license category and allow communities such as Cedar Rapids to apply. Just last year, lawmakers created a special licensing category for dog tracks.

The final call still would be up to the commission, so Cedar Rapids would have no guarantees. But criteria for the smoke-free license could be crafted to de-emphasize the cannibalization and saturation concerns that doomed its first application.

'If you can get closer to a proposal like that, and you have enough support broadly in both chambers and the governor's support, you probably have a better chance of success than just an individual vote on siting a casino,” Danielson said.

I still say this effort is a long shot, with far more plausible routes to the scrap heap than to the governor's desk. But if backers get past the gate and on to the horse-trading, who knows?

' Comments: (319) 398-8452; todd.dorman@thegazette.com