Pol Watchers

Former Gov. Jones critical of Beshear on casinos

Former Gov. Brereton Jones, who was instrumental in persuading Steve Beshear to run for governor, is criticizing Beshear’s handling of a constitutional amendment to allow casino gambling in Kentucky.

Beshear was “in the perfect position of getting it done and he did not,” Jones said Tuesday in an interview. He is chairman of the Kentucky Equine Education Project, which pushed casinos.

Jones, whose family owns and operates Airdrie Stud farm near Midway, stopped short of saying he was sorry he backed Beshear last year for governor but did say the fellow Democrat made several “big mistakes” that led to the downfall of the amendment in this year’s legislative session.

Beshear, who made casino gambling a cornerstone of his campaign for governor last year, declared the issue dead last week after House Democratic leaders informed him they could not wrangle the necessary 60 votes to approve it in the Democratic-controlled chamber.

Dick Brown, Beshear’s communications director, declined to comment on Jones’ remarks.

Last week, Jones told The Blood-Horse, a Lexington-based horse industry publication, that passing casino legislation “was extremely doable with a new governor showing the proper leadership, but for whatever reason, he chose to take a different approach, and I think it was the wrong approach.”

Jones said he thinks Beshear erred by not presenting his casino legislation at the beginning of the legislative session in January and rallying Democratic leadership behind it. Instead, Beshear proposed the bill on Feb. 14, well after lawmakers began struggling with the state budget and other sticky issues.

He also said Beshear made a mistake by not mentioning gambling in his State of the Commonwealth address in January and by dividing the Democratic Party by endorsing an unsuccessful candidate in a state Senate race in Eastern Kentucky.

But Jones said he still thinks Beshear can be a successful governor.  However, Jones said it will be more difficult for Beshear to get casino gambling approved in the 2010 General Assembly.

“A governor is strongest on the first day in office,” he said. “They then start making decisions and every decision offends someone. Your number of offenders accumulates and it’s harder to get things done.”

- Jack Brammer

Final decision on casinos expected this afternoon

Gov. Steve Beshear will meet with Democratic House leaders at 3 p.m. in his office Thursday to make a final decision about the future of a proposed constitutional amendment that would allow casino gambling in Kentucky.

"I would think we'll know exactly where we are at that point and either proceed based upon information that says we'll get the votes ... or call a halt to it," Beshear told the Herald-Leader.

Beshear and House Speaker Jody Richards have struggled for weeks to find the required 60 votes to pass House Bill 550 out of the House.

- Janet Patton

Beshear makes final -- he says -- push for casinos

FRANKFORT -- With seven days left in his first legislative session, Gov. Steve Beshear is calling House Democrats together at 4:30 p.m. Monday "to launch a final push" to get his casino gambling amendment passed and sent to the hostile Senate.

Beshear announced the last-ditch effort at a Rotunda press conference surrounded by House leadership and handful of supportive groups -- teachers, chambers of commerce, and racetracks. The governor met privately with track leaders in his office beforehand.

Beshear is again pegging his pitch to money and the state's financial situation, thrown into stark relief with the release today of the Senate's proposed budget.

"It is clear that expanded gaming in the Commonwealth of Kentucky will create a substantial amount of recurring revenue, and it's very clear today Kentucky could certainly use a substantial amount of recurring revenue from some source," Beshear said. "It's time to let the people decide if this is how they want to get it."

House Speaker Jody Richards, D-Bowling Green, said that Democrats would take "a hard count" at the caucus. That would give an idea of how persuasive Beshear and the House leaders will need to be. "We'll see what we can do to get the votes we need," Richards said. He said the count still stands in the 50s, with 60 votes needed to pass a constitutional amendment. "We'll decide in the next few days" if we will take it to the floor for a vote.

"We're going to mount an effort in the next few days to see if we can get the votes," Richards said. "I look forward to a vote soon."

Opponents to casino gambling said nothing has changed. "I can't imagine the circumstances in which they think they have a chance to get this out of the House," said John-Mark Hack of Say No to Casinos. "We feel very good about the House Democrats who have committed to voting against casinos in Kentucky." Hack said by his count "close to 50" House members are committed to voting against the casino amendment.

The Rev. Nancy Jo Kemper, executive director of the Kentucky Council of Churches, compared the rally to "whipping a dead horse with a wet noodle."

-- Janet Patton

Beshear to talk about future of gambling amendment

Gov. Steve Beshear has called a 2 p.m. news conference in the Capital Rotunda on casino gambling. Beshear will be there with House Speaker Jody Richards, D-Bowling Green, and the rest of House leadership to "talk about the future of the expanded gambling amendment in the House," said Dick Brown, Beshear spokesman.

Last week, Beshear and Richards both said they were still several votes shy of the 60 needed to get the constitutional amendment out of the House. Asked if that's changed, Brown said, "I would assume something's changed or they wouldn't bother having a news conference."

Besides Democratic House leaders, other backers of casino gambling, such as the chambers of commerce and racetracks also could be there.

-- Janet Patton

Casinos prove sticky political issue in Boston, too

Sure, Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear and Democratic House leaders are struggling to pass a constitutional amendment allowing casinos out of that chamber.

But the political bickering over casinos in the Massachusetts statehouse appears even more dramatic. It seems that while Democratic Gov.  Deval Patrick was making a public appeal for allowing casinos in a committee meeting Tuesday, the Democratic House Speaker was bringing lawmakers to his office to urge them to oppose the measure.

From the Wednesday edition of the Boston Globe:

It was a day the Patrick administration has been anticipating for six months, but having arrived, might have wished had never come. First thing in the morning, hours before the hearing was gaveled to order, House Speaker Salvatore F. DiMasi essentially declared Patrick's plan dead.

"Right now, my answer is no," DiMasi told a breakfast meeting of the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce.

In his strongest rebuke of Patrick's plan to date, he disparaged the governor's job projections and revenue estimates and then attacked it in on broad moral grounds.

"Casinos will absolutely cause human damage on a grand scale," DiMasi said during his 30-minute chamber address. "After six months of debate on this bill, I believe this evidence is not there, the case has not been made, and time is running out."

It was a day full of dramatic events. Last night, while the hearing was still going on downstairs, DiMasi continued to work against the proposal by calling individual committeee members into his office to try to influence their votes, said Representative Richard Ross, a Wrentham Republican, who was unpersuaded.

- Ryan Alessi

UPDATE|Stumbo to propose slots at tracks, no casinos

UPDATED THROUGHOUT 3:10 p.m. and again at 3:53

Rep. Greg Stumbo, D-Prestonsburg, said he's looking at filing an amendment to a casino bill that would allow slots and electronic gaming at racetracks, but not full casinos.

Stumbo said he now believes full-blown casinos would be the death-knell of smaller racetracks.

"In my view, it's the only way to save the casino gambling amendment," Stumbo said.

He has proposed similar legislation in the past.

Stumbo said he informed House Speaker Jody Richards of his plan. UPDATED: Stumbo said Richards told him he could present his plan to the House Democratic caucus. The caucus is huddling in a pivotal meeting later Thursday to discuss, among other things, potential revenue raising measures. But Richards said on his way to that meeting that they likely wouldn't have enough time to deal with that issue Thursday.

"The Speaker told me to proceed. I don't know if that was a blessing or a 'see-you-next-week in church," Stumbo said.

Richards later said that he and other Democratic House leaders are not pushing for this version.

"It might complicate things," he said, adding that the only way he would put his full backing behind it is if the casino subcommittee he created to review the issue approved that draft.

"It's an entirely different measure because it deals only with slots," Richards said. "It hasn't been vetted. I can't support it until my task force looks into it."

The version of the constitutional amendment that would allow casinos in Kentucky that was endorsed by that panel calls for nine full casinos with slots and table gaming. Five casino licenses "may" be at horse race tracks -- a point of contention with the horse industry that wanted stronger assurances that tracks would get licenses.

House leaders agreed to move that version of the amendment, which passed out of another committee late last week, on to the House floor on Thursday. But leaders agreed Thursday that they are still far from nailing down 60 votes needed to pass a constitutional amendment out of the House and to the Senate.

- Ryan Alessi

Lexington pastor leads anti-casino rally

Warning legislators that they will remember who votes for casino gambling and who votes against it, Lexington minister Rev. Jeff Fugate rallied hundreds of casino opponents in the Capitol Rotunda on Wednesday morning.

At least three Republican House members who oppose the constitutional amendment came in support.

Fugate, pastor of the Clays Mill Road Baptist Church, urged followers from all over the state to contact legislators, particularly those who might be on the fence.

"When you talk to someone and they say they're undecided, help 'em decide," Fugate said.

John-Mark Hack, president of Say No to Casinos, also addressed the crowd. 

"Casino-crats are hell-bent" on transforming the commonwealth with a "casino republic," Hack said. "I want to call on the governor and other casino-crat politicians to tell us which 10 percent of the children in the Rotunda today are going to be condemned to a life of addiction."

- Janet Patton

Casino measure now short of 'ayes'

By Ryan Alessi
RALESSI@HERALD-LEADER.COM

FRANKFORT -- Even as House Speaker Jody Richards and Gov. Steve Beshear expressed optimism about rounding up the necessary 60 votes to pass a casino bill, a Herald-Leader survey of the 99 House members showed it had a long way to go.

Just 37 House members said that they plan to support the current version of the constitutional amendment that would allow casinos. Twelve others told the Herald-Leader they were undecided and five wouldn't reveal their positions.

Perhaps more concerning for advocates of the proposal, such as Richards and Beshear, is that 44 of the 99 current House members said they're likely to vote against the draft of the constitutional amendment that's pending before the lower chamber..

House Democratic Whip Rob Wilkey, who is responsible for counting votes, said his updated tally of lawmakers who could agree to vote for a casino amendment was "well above 50."

Upon seeing the Herald-Leader's vote count -- which relied upon interviews with 84 lawmakers and public statements by the other 15 -- Wilkey said those who took definitive stands are in line with his tally.

Without naming any lawmakers, Wilkey said he expects many of those who told the Herald-Leader they are undecided or were keeping their position secret could be convinced to vote for it. And he said House leaders will be trying to talk "soft 'No's" into changing their minds.

"There are some people who are saying 'No' right now who might be able to be persuaded," he said.

Still, Wilkey conceded that the next several days will be critical for Democratic leaders to lock up "five or six votes that are going to be critical" to get over the 60-vote threshold.

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How representatives might vote

Beshear meets with Senate Dems on casinos

After meeting with House Democratic leadership in the morning, Gov. Steve Beshear met with Senate Democrats Tuesday at noon.

Beshear said afterward that they talked about a number of issues, including the constitutional amendment to expand gambling.

The bill that House Speaker Jody Richards, D-Bowling Green, maneuvered through committee last week would allow nine casinos but would not reserve any licenses solely for racetracks.

Beshear said he and Senate Minority Floor Leader Ed Worley, of Richmond, agreed "very strongly" that if the casino amendment gets to the Senate that protections for the horse industry should be inserted.

"Senator Worley assures met that it has significant support," Beshear said of the casino bill, which has not yet come up for a vote in the full House.

"I think the casino amendment is very much in play," Beshear said. But it does not yet have the 60 votes necessary to pass the House. "We're in the fifties," Beshear said. "That's of people I feel pretty certain would be a 'yes.'"

He said those are votes "of folks who can be in favor of the speaker's version, and if there are concerns ... we note that."

He said he's struggling to get the casino bill on the ballot as a way to avoid raising taxes, which said are his "last option." House leaders are to present their proposed two-year budget to him on Thursday. That budget is likely to include an increase in taxes on cigarettes.

-- Janet Patton

Capitol sign-in sheets missing

Several pages of Capitol visitor sign-in sheets apparently have disappeared, including those from a day that Gov. Steve Beshear met with racetrack executives and horse breeders.

According to Mark Hebert of WHAS, logs from Jan. 7, 8 & 9 are missing. Hebert requested copies from Kentucky State Police, who man the doors.

State police told him after "a thorough search" that neither they nor Finance and Administration Cabinet's Facilities Building Services, where the records are retained, can find them.

The Herald-Leader requested -- and got -- the records in January.

The Jan. 9 sheets have several board members from the Kentucky Equine Education Project coming in that morning: Nick Nicholson, president of Keeneland; former Gov. Brereton Jones; WinStar Farm president and CEO Doug Cauthen; Churchill Downs racetrack president Steve Sexton; Lane's End Farm general manager Bill Farish; and U.S. Equestrian Federation CEO John Long. Other horse industry names on the sheets: Louisville surgeon and thoroughbred breeder Dr. David Richardson; Kentucky Horsemen's Benevolent and Protective Association executive director Marty Maline; and Kentucky Downs owner Corey S. Johnson.

Also on a sign-in sheet for Jan. 9: Bill Yung, at 10:25 a.m., apparently for the governor's officer. But representatives of Beshear's office have denied meeting with the Northern Kentucky hotelier and casino owner.

Hebert is expected to have a story about the sign-in sheets on WHAS 11 Monday night.

- Janet Patton