House lawmakers overwhelmingly reject proposal to legalize sports betting in Georgia

If you want to put your money down on your favorite sports team, you’re going to have to break state law. Sports betting is illegal in Georgia, and it’s likely to stay that way after a bill to legalize the practice went down in flames Friday in the state House, falling short ahead of a […]

If you want to put your money down on your favorite sports team, you’re going to have to break state law.

Sports betting is illegal in Georgia, and it’s likely to stay that way after a bill to legalize the practice went down in flames Friday in the state House, falling short ahead of a key legislative deadline.

The measure needed 120 votes to pass but only received 63. The no votes were 98.

Sports betting is a perennial issue at the state Capitol, and it doesn’t fall neatly along party lines. Some conservatives support it because they say it will be a boon to the state’s economy, while others oppose it because of moral or religious reasons. Some representatives from both parties say that online gambling sites exploit addiction for profit, while others argue that bringing what is currently an under-the-table practice into the light will allow for regulation and help for people dealing with addiction.

The bill, House Resolution 450, would have sent proceeds to a special fund to be spent on pre-K and other educational programs with a portion set aside to benefit programs that seek to prevent and treat addiction.

Midway Democratic state Rep. Al Williams said he believes Georgia needs more gaming, but he urged members of his party to vote against the resolution because he said Democrats had no say in how the money was spent.

“This is in need of bipartisan support, and to get bipartisan support, you need to let the folks on this side of the aisle have some say on how the money is going to be divided,” he said. “The last time I was handed a plate of food and told ‘Eat this,’ I was quite young and didn’t have any choice. Since then, I get to decide what to eat.”

Hartwell Republican Rep. Alan Powell is a proponent of expanding gambling, but he urged his GOP colleagues to vote down the bill because he said it doesn’t go far enough. Powell said the state’s economy would be better served by creating destination resorts where people would come from other states to gamble. He said sports betting would bring in relatively little to Georgia’s coffers.

“You hear all this pie in the sky about how much money they’re going to raise – no. … because most of these sports betting (services) are off-shore, in other states, and you can’t audit them, and that’s the way it is,” he said.

Dunwoody Democratic Rep. Long Tran cast the issue as a matter of national security.

“In this chamber, for the last three years I have heard ‘Foreign adversaries, we cannot have foreign adversaries buy our farmland, we cannot have foreign adversaries do this or that,’ and yet here we are letting foreign adversaries get our children, our young men, addicted to gambling and getting access to their data. It’s time that we realized that this is a real thing that happens, and we need to regulate it, and the best way to do that is to legalize it.”

Chatter on the House floor fell silent when Dalton Republican Rep. Kasey Carpenter shared his own experience with gambling addiction.

“I am an addict,” he said. “I started picking football games when I was 8 years old. This bill, to me, is about safety.

“Legalizing sports betting eliminates the chase. You got $100, you can bet $100. The bookie, he gives you until Monday, so you lose $100, then you turn it to $200, then you turn it to $400, next thing you know, you’re down $1,200. This eliminates that.”

Friday was Crossover Day, the final day for a bill to pass from one chamber to the other for it to have a smooth path toward becoming law. The legislative session is set to end April 2.

SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE