The key to saving the horse racing industry in Nebraska is to allow bettors to use new gambling machines to wager on horse races that have already happened, a state senator said Wednesday.
Sen. Scott Lautenbaugh of Omaha told the Legislature's Judiciary Committee that instant racing terminals should be allowed at licensed horse racing tracks as a way to boost revenue for the industry and the state. The bill would allow betting at gambling machines that show races from a library of tens of thousands of old races. The races are chosen at random. No place or time would be listed on the screen, and horses would not be named.
Opponents said adding the machines merely expands gambling and does nothing to help Nebraskans.
"Enough is enough with gambling in this state," said Pat Loontjer, executive director of the anti-gambling group Gambling with the Good Life.
"Expanded gambling does nothing to help small businesses or to help our families. Our opinion is that this is a horse slot machine."
Lautenbaugh said adding such machines also could create jobs.
"This is not expanded gambling," he said. "We are talking about horse racing, which has been around for a long time. We need to support it or let it go by the wayside."
The committee heard more than an hour and a half of testimony on Legislative Bill 806, but no vote was taken on the measure.
Others testifying in favor of the bill said the games are in use at horse tracks in Kentucky and Arkansas.
Greg Hosch, general manager at Horsemen's Park racetrack in Omaha, said money raised by adding the machines would help build a new racetrack in Lincoln.
"We need some sort of ancillary revenue to get this track built," he said. "This is the shot in the arm that will jumpstart our whole industry.
"It will save thousands of jobs already in this state in the horse racing industry and create thousands of more jobs."
Dave Wimmer, a businessman from West Point, testified against the bill as a board member of Gambling with the Good Life. He said any kind of expanded gambling hurts business across the state, both in the toll gambling takes on employees and the money it keeps from other businesses.
"This is troublesome as a business owner," he said. "I look at it as direct competition with any other business in the community."
