The Illinois state Senate last week approved a plan that will create three new casinos, including a land-based site in Chicago, and allow existing riverboat casinos to expand by several thousand gaming positions, such as slot machines.
The money will help fund a $13 billion state borrowing program for road and school construction projects and mass transit in the city. Schools will, moreover, have $300 million more, much of that for the base-level classroom spending per student.
Senate Majority Leader Debbie Halvorson, D-Crete, said she'd like to see "one of the new casinos in the south Chicago suburbs," which she represents, because local gamblers are flocking to place bets across the border in Indiana.
Make the Most Money
"It needs to be put in a place that would make the most money for the state," said the senator.
A similar casino plan passed the Illinois Senate in May, but failed in the House of Representatives.
That bill would have allowed all existing casinos to expand, brought a publicly owned casino to Chicago and offered four riverboat gaming licenses, including one for the south suburbs that would have to have been constructed within eight miles of the Indiana border and north of U.S. 30, an interstate highway.
But, in the latest legislation, while Chicago will receive one gaming facility, the decision on where the other two would be built falls to the Illinois Gaming Board.
Discussion of expanding gambling has become as inevitable as death and taxes at the Illinois statehouse. But in the past, gambling measures usually died because they got so loaded up with goodies that legislators backed away.
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