The Indiana bill that includes a ban on sweepstakes casinos is out of conference committee and ready to go before both chambers a second time.
The conference committee for HB 1052 announced on Monday that there were small technical changes to the bill that did not involve changing the language around the sweepstakes ban.
The Indiana Legislative session adjourns on Friday.
Bill passed chambers easily before
A ban on sweepstakes should be in place by July 1, which is when this bill is enacted should it pass through the chambers as easily as it did the first time.
The House passed HB 1052 earlier this month by an 86-12 vote. The Senate approved the bill last week by a 37-8 margin, but adopted an amendment unrelated to the sweepstakes casino provision.
Conference Committee Chairman and sponsor of HB 1052 Rep. Ethan Manning said he dissented on the bill to make the technical changes, which included removing unrelated language from the bill because it was included in a different bill.
Sweepstakes regulation had support
Sweepstakes casinos would have had support for regulation if the ban language did not make it out of the conference committee.
Sens. Ron Alting and David Niezgodski both said they would have been interested in considering regulating the industry. Alting said he was told in no uncertain terms that regulating sweepstakes was not happening.
“Let me just say, I offered the amendment for the sweepstakes which regulated and taxed it that I thought would be appropriate but got a tremendous amount of feedback of ‘no go,’ particularly with leadership with both chambers as well, it was really going to be dead on arrival back to Public Policy members of the House of Representatives,’ Alting said during a Senate committee meeting.
