Delaware Senate approves bill lowering licensing fees for casinos that make capital investments

The Delaware Senate unanimously approved on Tuesday a bill that would lower licensing fees for casinos that make capital investments. The bill is supported by all three casinos in the First State and the Standardbred and Thoroughbred Horsemen. It also had bipartisan support, with eight Democrat and six Republican cosponsors.

Senate Bill 64, sponsored by Sen. Trey Paradee, D-Dover, would allow the casinos, which under a 2018 bill were required to pay a $3 million license fee to operate table games, to forgo portions of that fee if they pay for capital investment, reports Delaware Live. The bill also moves the date casinos would have to pay this fee from June 30 to Dec. 31.

Secretary of Finance Rick Geisenberger said that if he could have done the 2018 bill over again, they would have made sure all the money from the table gaming license went towards capital investment. When asked by Paradee if the program has made any money for the state, Geisenberger said in response that to date it hasn’t.

“The benefits that the casinos were to realize in exchange for making additional capital investments and marketing investments in the 2018 deal have worked exactly as planned,” the secretary stated, as per the cited source. “Which is basically, they would get a benefit, and half of that would have to be reinvested into the casinos.”

After the passage of Senate Substitute for Senate Bill 144, casinos were only able to deduct from that fee by spending money to add jobs or for marketing expenses. Over the past three years, because of the pandemic, that fee was waived because of the lower revenue casinos were generating, but the money will be due starting this June.

According to Geisenberger, table games were hit the hardest during the pandemic because the social distancing requirements limited casinos to three people at a table designed for six. This adverse context also led to mass layoffs of dealers and was followed by casinos being unable to hire enough people to bring their numbers back to pre-pandemic levels.

Senate Bill 64 has now been sent to the House for consideration.