Steve Burns
WMAL.com
NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. – (WMAL) MGM expects at least half of its customers to cross the Woodrow Wilson Bridge from Virginia as they open their new facility at National Harbor Thursday night. Seeing all that potential tax revenue heading next door has some Virginia politicians stirring the pot in the hopes of making the General Assembly start to consider legalizing casino gambling.
“I really think this is something we should’ve done in Virginia and we should’ve thought about it years ago,” State Senator Scott Surovell (D-Fairfax) told WMAL. “We kind of missed the boat on it on Northern Virginia.”
Surovell expects any casino operator willing to consider Virginia should the General Assembly legalize casinos would find stiff competition and may choose to locate outside the D.C. metro area. He suggested the Virginia Beach-Hampton Roads area.
“The state of Maryland itself is going to get about $350 million a year out of MGM to fund its schools, and half that money is going to be coming from the state of Virginia,” he said. “We’re really missing a big opportunity to help broaden our tax base in Virginia.”
Virginia remains one of 12 states that have no legalized commercial or tribal casinos.
“In many ways, Virginia is still culturally, very traditional,” Christopher Newport University political analyst Quentin Kidd told WMAL. He said the lottery coming to Virginia in 1987 was a momentous occasion, and mostly driven by lawmakers seeing neighboring states capturing the revenue. The lottery was legalized through a statewide referendum.
“I have a hard time seeing the General Assembly just taking this on their own,” Kidd said. “In my mind it would have to happen like the lottery happened. It would be the General Assembly saying ‘we’ll let the people vote on it in a referendum.'”
He said there has been local support, especially in the Hampton Roads area. The Portsmouth City Council had passed multiple bills allowing gambling, both on the coast and on a riverboat, but they were continually blocked in Richmond.
“It could be that as Virginia sees the revenue that gets generated by Maryland, they become more open to the idea of trying to capture that revenue back,” Kidd said.
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