Casino moratorium bill stalls in Iowa Senate committee
Cedar Rapids Mayor Tiffany O'Donnell spoke against a proposed casino moratorium in a Senate subcommittee meeting Feb. 4. The measure ultimately failed to advance. (Photo by Robin Opsahl/Iowa Capital Dispatch)
A proposed five-year casino moratorium hit a roadblock Tuesday in the Iowa Senate after sailing through the House.
Sen. Ken Rozenboom, R-Oskaloosa, said Tuesday there is not sufficient support for the moratorium among Senate Republicans and he chose not to debate the bill at a State Government Committee meeting.
House File 144, passed by the Iowa House last week, would set a five-year moratorium on new licenses for casinos in addition to setting new standards for the Iowa Racing and Gaming Commission to consider when assessing future license applicants. The commission would be barred from issuing licenses for casinos that are projected to impact the adjusted gross receipts of an existing Iowa casino by more than 10%. The bill would also ban new applications from counties where a casino application was denied for eight years.
While a Senate subcommittee advanced the measure, House File 144, at a Tuesday meeting, Rozenboom read a statement at the beginning of the State Government Committee stating his reasoning for not bringing the measure forward.
'I am no fan of gambling and my decision not to advance this legislation should not be considered in support of casino expansion,' Rozenboom said in the statement. 'According to my conversations, this bill did not have enough support from Senate Republicans to advance all the way through the Senate process. In the interest of moving this session forward to other issues of critical importance to Iowans, I have no plans to reconsider the legislation for the remainder of this session.'
Rozenboom told reporters after the meeting that the casino moratorium has been a 'difficult' issue, but that 'at the end of the day we do have a regulatory process and a commission that deals with this, and it's not an unusual position for Senate Republicans to simply say, 'well, we have a process in place, let's just follow the process.''
With no moratorium in place, the Iowa Racing and Gaming Commission is expected to make a decision Thursday on granting a license for a Cedar Rapids casino. The commission will evaluate the Cedar Crossing Casino and Entertainment Center, the $275 million planned facility in Cedar Rapids which was proposed shortly after the previous moratorium expired June 30, 2024.
Cedar Rapids Mayor Tiffany O'Donnell told reporters she was 'really proud that the process has been able to play out,' and is looking forward to bringing the project to the commission for a decision. Though the IRGC denied Cedar Rapids casino licenses in 2014 and 2017, she said she was hopeful the commission would see the benefits the Cedar Crossing project would bring to both Cedar Rapids and to the state.
'Times are different today, I believe, than when we brought a project before the Racing and Gaming Commission,' O'Donnell said. 'The time is right, the data shows that, and our city is in a very different position too. And it's my hope the commission sees this for the economic development opportunity that it is.'
At the subcommittee meeting earlier Tuesday, supporters of the moratorium urged lawmakers to pass the measure, saying it was necessary to prevent job and revenue losses at existing casinos — especially the nearby Riverside Casino and Isle Casino Hotel Waterloo. Studies had found that more than half of revenue generated by Cedar Crossing would come from existing revenue currently heading to other Iowa casinos, while also generating $60 million in new total statewide commercial gambling revenue by 2028.
Patty Koller, executive director of the Washington County Riverboat Foundation, called Cedar Rapids and supporters of the casino 'bullies.'
'My rural community is being threatened every few years,' she said. 'Our livelihood is threatened. It needs to stop, and only you senators can do it.'
O'Donnell disputed the term 'bully' at the subcommittee hearing, saying other casinos and areas were keeping Cedar Rapids from having a fair bid at a casino license. She also said the impact of a Cedar Rapids casino on other state casinos should be viewed in the context of previous concerns about Wild Rose Casino & Hotel Jefferson's potential cannibalization of revenue at Prairie Meadows and other central Iowa casinos.
'Will it compete with nearby casinos?' O'Donnell said. 'Absolutely, it will. And competition makes everybody better, just as we saw (with) doom and gloom scenarios around Wild Rose — 'We're going to take all from the competing casinos' — and Prairie Meadows, lo and behold, saw a revenue burst just a few years later. The idea of Cedar Crossing has already pushed, as we hear, other casinos to be better and do better. Imagine what would happen if these casinos never had to worry about competition.'
Though the Senate State Government Committee won't consider the bill, that does not mean it's dead and Thursday's commission action may not be the final word. In an Iowa Press taping Friday, Senate President Amy Sinclair said the 'pressure is less' in the Senate to pass a measure before Racing and Gaming Commission meeting because of the retroactive start date of Jan. 1, 2025 included in the bill.
However, Rozenboom told reporters he does not anticipate discussions on a moratorium making a reappearance later in the 2025 session.
'A moratorium — I don't see a path forward for that approach,' Rozenboom. 'Should we consider or reconsider, 'what are those guidelines that the commission needs to consider?' That's a fair question, and in subsequent years, perhaps we'll deal with that. But no, not a moratorium — I don't see any further discussion on that in the foreseeable future.'
Regardless of any future movement by the Legislature, the IRGC still plans to meet Thursday. Tina Eick, the IRGC administrator, said 'no changes have been made or are planned to the agenda' outside of a room change.
'The Commission is looking forward to completing this lengthy process,' Eick said in a statement. 'Considering a new casino application is just one small portion of the work the Commission performs. The Commission will also be handling other work as a part of its upcoming meeting including approving contracts and determining administrative fines.'
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