Republican Iowa Rep. Bobby Kaufman has been leading the effort to shut down the possibility of any new casinos from opening in the state. (Image: courtesy of Rep. Bobby Kaufman / X)
Both houses of the Iowa legislature moved quickly to pass a five-year casino moratorium on Thursday, a move that could prevent Cedar Rapids from getting approval for a new casino.
The Iowa House passed the ban by a 68-31 margin on Thursday afternoon, just hours after the Iowa Senate moved its own version of the bill out of the Local Government Committee, setting the state for a full floor vote early next week.
Legislators in favor of the ban are fast-tracking the moratorium in an effort to head off a new casino license for a Cedar Rapids facility that would be known as the Cedar Crossing Casino & Entertainment Center. That complex is being developed by Peninsula Pacific Entertainment and the Linn County Gaming Association, who have argued that the economic impact on portions of the city devastated by flooding in 2008 would be enormous.
However, representatives of other communities that already host casinos have pointed to economic impact studies suggesting that a new casino in Cedar Rapids would heavily cannibalize existing revenues.
Leading that charge is State Rep. Bobby Kaufmann (R-Wilton), whose district includes the Riverside Casino & Golf Resort, the facility most likely to be impacted by a competitor in Cedar Rapids.
“I think the studies show significant cannibalism is very real, and I do believe we are in the correct purview to tell the Iowa Racing and Gaming Commission how they should make major decisions,” Kaufmann said during debate on the moratorium.
The speed with which the two parallel bills have been moving through the legislature is tied to a Feb. 6 meeting of the Iowa Racing and Gaming Commission. At that meeting, the IRGC is scheduled to vote on whether to award a license for a Cedar Rapids casino.
Given the margins in the House vote – which was decided more on geographic lines rather than party divisions – and the fact that the Senate Local Government Committee passed the bill by a 9-3 margin, passage in the Senate seems likely next week. However, there are opponents to the bill, and they made their voices heard on Thursday.
“By and large, free markets do provide good products and is driven principally by the incentives of competition,” Senator Herman Quirmbach (D-Ames) said while opposing the bill in committee. “This is especially true when there is entry available into a market.”
Cedar Rapids has tried to push for a casino license in a narrow window that exists after a two-year moratorium passed in 2022 expired. Linn County voters earlier voted against a gaming referendum in 2003, though they passed two later referendums in 2013 and again in 2021, the latter of which was designed to allow the county to seek a license perpetually without continuing to question voters.
The proposed legislation includes not only a moratorium on casino licensing, but also additional rules that would apply to any future licensing decisions by the IRGC. That includes a rule that would dictate that revenues of any new casinos could not cannibalize those of existing casinos by more than 10 percent. The Iowa House removed language that would have asked the IRGC to conduct an internet gaming study in order to ensure its bill matched the one working its way through the Senate.
Ed Scimia is a freelance writer who has been covering the gaming industry since 2008. He graduated from Syracuse University in 2003 with degrees in Magazine Journalism and Political Science. In his time as a freelancer, Ed has worked for About.com, Gambling.com, and Covers.com, among other sites. He has also authored multiple books and enjoys curling competitively, which has led to him creating curling-related content for his YouTube channel "Chess on Ice."
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