Not enough GOP votes for expanded gaming in budget, NC House Speaker says

If a plan to radically expand gambling in North Carolina is to become law this year, it will have to be as part of the new state budget that lawmakers hope to pass next week, Senate Republican Leader Phil Berger said Thursday.

But, according to an email sent Wednesday night and obtained by WRAL, the House Speaker told his fellow Republicans that he doesn't have the GOP votes to pass a budget with expanded gaming in it.

"To be clear we will not pass a budget that does not have 61 Republican votes," Speaker Tim Moore, R-Cleveland, wrote to his members at 9:23 p.m. Wednesday. "As you can see, there are not 61 Republicans willing to vote for the budget if it includes gaming."

In the email, Moore said to "watch your inboxes for a caucus meeting next week about the budget without gaming." There are 72 Republicans in the 120-member House.

It is unclear if leadership is abandoning the idea of expanded gaming in the budget altogether or preparing an alternative in case votes don't change. Caucus discussions are still ongoing, the speaker's spokeswoman told WRAL.

That plan — which is still coming together behind closed doors — would authorize new commercial casinos in the state and legalize video lottery terminals, the slot-machine-style consoles the state has tried for decades to excise from restaurants and gas stations across the state with limited success.

The two gambling issues have been meshed together with the budget, with no plans to consider them separate from each other or as a stand alone bill apart from the state’s $30 billion budget plan, Berger said.

“I just don't see gaming going forward as a separate deal,” said Berger, R-Rockingham. “I think it's either in the budget, or we don't have a particular pathway as far as gaming.”

That means lawmakers who might have opposed a gambling expansion as a separate measure will have to accept it if they want to vote for a state budget expected to include raises for state employees and teachers and a long-anticipated Medicaid expansion that would extend health insurance to hundreds of thousands of the state’s working poor.

Gambling plan details have not been released to the public beyond a draft casino bill leaked to WRAL News in June. Berger said the final proposal likely won’t be revealed until early next week as part of the budget. It’s unclear how many video lottery terminals would be allowed under the deal coming together, or where they could be installed. At least one lawmaker has proposed a plan to legalize tens of thousands of terminals in businesses with alcoholic beverage licenses.

The question now is whether enough House Republicans support the plan for it to pass next week, when the House and Senate expect to vote through a budget already running two months behind the July 1 start of the state’s new fiscal year. House Republicans discussed the situation Tuesday during a closed-door meeting that lasted more than three hours. So far, House leadership hasn’t released the all-important count showing whether the idea has enough support to move forward.

“The gaming issue would require further caucus consideration before it could be included as part of the state budget,” Demi Dowdy, spokesman for Moore, said Thursday.

Speaker Pro Tempore Sarah Stevens, part of House leadership, said Thursday afternoon that "at this point" the measure didn't appear to have enough support. "It is my opinion it is not going to be in the budget," said Stevens, R-Surry.

Moore has said repeatedly that a gambling expansion, which could boost state revenue by billions as casinos and video lottery terminals are taxed, won’t move forward unless at least half of House Republicans support it. Republicans are feeling pressure from both sides, and a number of national conservative groups have called on North Carolina lawmakers to reject the deal.

That includes CPAC, a well-known conservative group, which said on social media Thursday it had heard "lots of troubling reports of backroom deals and arm twisting coming out of North Carolina." The post got a signal boost from former President Donald Trump's son, Donald Jr., who called the situation "outrageous."

Major spending priorities are on hold while the matter is decided. The legislature’s Republican majority voted earlier this year to expand Medicaid, a multi-billion-dollar policy shift, but added a caveat: Expansion can’t be implemented until after the budget passes.

That gives Republican lawmakers, who already hold veto-proof supermajorities in both legislative chambers, even more leverage over Gov. Roy Cooper and other Democrats, since they’ll have to swallow any number of Republican priorities in the budget to get expansion, a top Democratic goal for more than a decade.

The governor has said he wants to see details on gambling proposals before weighing in. He has also said those proposals should be separated from the budget. Berger said Thursday that he hasn’t talked to the governor recently about the budget, but he expects Cooper to sign it into law.

“There are a lot of things that will be in that budget that the governor would be very happy to see happen,” Berger said. “One of which would be Medicaid expansion, which doesn't happen if we don't get this over the finish line.”

Berger is a key proponent of casino expansion. The draft proposal leaked to WRAL News in June called for four new casinos, including one in Berger’s home county. A casino recently opened near Rockingham County, across the Virginia border in Danville. Berger has argued it’s sucking North Carolina customers, and dollars, across the state line.