Keller @ Large: Massachusetts lawmakers are running out of time to legalize sports betting
BOSTON -- The clock is ticking for lawmakers on Beacon Hill. With less than two weeks left in the legislative session, a slew of major bills - including the $52 billion dollar budget - still need to pass.
And one smaller bill with a lot of public interest remains in limbo - legalized sports betting.
Four of the six New England states already have it. Will Massachusetts become the fifth?
"It's already happening," says Rep. Jerry Parisella (D-Beverly), the lead House negotiator in the conference committee on sports betting. "Let's legalize it like we did marijuana and have protections for our consumers."
"I get it, I know people are itching to place bets," says Parisella's Senate counterpart, Eric Lesser (D-Longmeadow), a supporter of sports betting. But with the session's July 31 deadline looking, the committee is still to find compromise between competing bills.
Says Parisella: "We permit college betting in the House version, they prohibit it in the Senate version. And the tax rates are different, the Senate proposal is for 35% tax on mobile betting and ours is 15%."
Those are some large - but not irreconcilable - gaps.
But it has become clear that the devil is not so much in the details as in deep philosophical differences between the House and Senate. For instance, Parisella says concerns about corruption of college athletes can be dealt with by banning prop bets on individual players. "If Jon Keller's a running back for Boston College we can't bet on his individual performance, just on the team's itself." (That's a relief - my glasses tend to go flying when a linebacker tackles me.)
But to hear Lesser tell it, that might not be enough to mollify skeptical senators. "There's concerns members have about addiction, there's concerns people have about, frankly, just bad consequences that could come from gambling," he says.
And in the context of a nearly $53 billion budget, the rosiest estimates of a mere $70 million a year brought in by sports betting aren't likely to change many minds up there. Notes Lesser: "Some of the biggest states in the country - Florida, California, Texas - do not have sports betting up and running yet."
So what are the odds you'll be able to get a bet down on the Pats this fall without crossing state lines?
With these closed-door negotiations, you never know. But it looks to me like the House wants legal sports betting a lot more than the Senate does.
You could say the goalposts keep moving.
And in the sport they play on Beacon Hill, it takes both branches to get over the goal line.