State lawmaker Pat Garofalo said he's tired of having to drive to Iowa just to place a legal bet on sports.
Representative Garofalo (R), Dakota County, was on with Adam Carter on the WCCO Morning News, and he said he wants to continue to work with tribes and professional sports teams, among others, to make sports betting legal like it is in surrounding states and Canada.
“I think that in the upcoming session, we just have to work with the tribes of Minnesota, the tracks, the running Ace’s, as well as Canterbury, and then the professional teams, to reach an agreement on this,” Garofalo told WCCO.
There are legal forms of sports betting in all of Minnesota’s neighboring states including Wisconsin, Iowa, North Dakota and South Dakota.
A new survey shows nearly one in five U.S. adults bet money on sports over the past year and the numbers continue to increase.
But Minnesota has not come to an agreement on a legal sports betting bill. The DFL-controlled House passed legislation in this year’s legislative session with support from Minnesota tribal leaders, but a similar bill in the Senate did not pass.
The only difference between the two was the Senate bill granting the two racetracks – Running Aces and Canterbury – authority to use mobile sports gambling along with the tribes.
The Senate bill never reached the floor for a vote once again dooming Minnesota’s opportunity to legalize sports gambling. Instead it is another year of NFL football, by far the biggest revenue opportunity, being pushed to sports wagering sites outside of Minnesota.
Garofalo says there is plenty to go around and he expects that there is room for an agreement that both sides can support.
Minnesota is one of 15 states that have not gotten a sports gambling bill passed. All of the other 35 states (and the District of Columbia) either have in-person gambling, casino gambling, online gambling, or some sort of pending legislation. California and Vermont should pass something in 2023, while Florida is still stuck in a legal limbo.
All of the other states except Minnesota and Hawaii that haven’t yet legalized sports wagering are strongly Republican: Alaska, Texas, Missouri, Oklahoma, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, Kentucky, Idaho and Utah.
But some Minnesota Republicans like Garofalo are supportive of passing legislation. Several voted in favor of the House bill last May.
Garofalo says that he views this upcoming session as almost a last gasp to get something passed.
“If we're not going to be able to do that next year, then I have to seriously question when we could ever get it done,” said Garofalo. “We're talking about a new market for these enterprises and deciding what sort of preferences they're going to have. This should be a pretty easy slam dunk for the 2023 session. But then again, I thought the same thing for the 2022 session as well.”
The legislative session begins in St. Paul on Tuesday, January 3.
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