Monday, June 2, 2003 | 11:10 a.m.
SUN STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS
LINCOLN, Neb. -- The push to ask voters to approve casino gambling in Nebraska failed Friday when the Legislature adjourned -- but may be resurrected in January.
A measure (LR11CA) would have asked voters to approve up to eight casinos.
Lawmakers voted 25-20 in April to send the measure to final-round consideration -- meaning they were one vote away from putting the measure on the ballot.
But they agreed Wednesday to return the proposal to second-round debate in order to consider an amendment to the measure.
The amendment failed, and when the smoke cleared, the motion to return the measure to final-round consideration failed. It needed 25 votes to advance, but got only 21.
"I lost votes," said Sen. Ray Janssen of Nickerson, the sponsor of the measure.
Pat Loontjer, executive director of the Nebraska anti-gambling group Gambling With the Good Life, said she was delighted.
"They went one step back and they got egg all over their face for doing it," she said.
Despite Wednesday's action, Loontjer said she expected gambling proponents will not give up easily and will try again to get something on the ballot.
Janssen and other backers of the measure say if the Legislature doesn't act, a petition will be circulated by the people to allow casinos in the state, which would limit the state's ability to control such gambling.
Wednesday's failed amendment was offered by Omaha Sen. Kermit Brashear. It would have allowed a maximum of six casinos -- instead of the original eight.
He said people who are trying to keep casinos out of Nebraska by arguing they would cause compulsive gambling and other social ills are ignoring the facts.
He said Nebraskans wagered $340 million last year on thoroughbred racing, the state-sponsored lottery, keno and charitable gaming.
In addition, he said, an estimated $250 million is wagered by Nebraskans at casinos across the Missouri River from Omaha in Iowa.
"We ought to admit it, to know it, to see it," he said. "Understand the facts."
The measure would need the votes of 30 lawmakers to place it before voters on the November 2004 ballot. The Legislature meets again in January and proponents say they may bring up the casino measure then.
Brashear's amendment would have allowed two casinos the Omaha area, three at racetracks in Lincoln, Grand Island and Columbus, and one somewhere in western Nebraska.
Sheldon Adelson, owner of The Venetian gambling resort in Las Vegas and developer of a casino in the Chinese city of Macau, had lobbied Nebraska lawmakers to approve a casino measure. Adelson has been interested in establishing a casino in the Omaha area.
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