Proposal To Bring Poker Rooms To Georgia Declared Dead For This Year

Legislation that would have allowed two Las Vegas-style casinos with poker rooms in the state of Georgia is officially off the table in 2017.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that state Sen. Brandon Beach, a Republican, doesn’t have the votes needed to advance his proposal out of committee. The window for the bill was quickly closing, as an early March deadline was set for determining if it would be considered later this year.

Beach said he will soon begin the process of preparing the bill for a run in 2018.

The legislation was Senate Bill 79, and it would have allowed state residents to decide whether the Peach State can have a casino industry. Just 10 U.S. states don’t have casinos.

One of the two “destination resorts” proposed under the bill would have come to the metro Atlanta area. The minimum investment for that project was $2 billion.

The other casino would have been built in a list of cities that included Columbus, Savannah and Augusta. Previous proposals called for as many as five casinos, but the legislation was scaled back to give it a better chance in the legislature. That hasn’t panned out yet.

Beach said that the two casinos could provide Georgia with $450 million in tax revenue each year, thanks to a proposed 20 percent tax rate. Five percent of that money was earmarked for beefing up police departments across the state.

Georgians spend an estimated $600 million each year at casinos in other states.

Opponents of casinos have expressed concerns that they would hurt lottery revenues.

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