INDIANAPOLIS — As state legislators wrestle to come up with the final version of a smoking ban bill laden with exemptions, there’s one carve-out that seems secure: Indiana’s gaming facilities.
The state’s casinos have successfully lobbied to keep themselves free from the legislation that would make it a crime to smoke in most public places.
The reason: money.
They’ve convinced backers of the smoking ban bill that their industry and the state of Indiana would take a big economic hit if gamblers had to snuff out their cigarettes.
It’s not an argument made from thin air: The fiscal analysts at the non-partisan Legislative Services Agency estimate the state would lose $194 million in annual gaming tax and casino admission revenue if smoking was banned in the state’s 11 casinos and two racetrack-based racinos.
One of the sources that state fiscal analysts relied on was a 2009 report from the Federal Reserve Bank that looked at what happened in Illinois after that state passed a comprehensive smoking ban in 2008.
The report said Illinois casinos saw a 22 percent drop in revenue after the ban passed, while gaming revenues rose by about 2 percent in the Iowa and Missouri and remained flat in Indiana — all states with smoke-filled casinos.
Some supporters of the smoking ban question those numbers and blame other factors, including small, aging casino facilities, for Illinois’ woes.
But the exemption for the casinos and racinos are in both the House and Senate versions of the Indiana smoking ban bill that’s now headed to a legislative conference committee to work out other major differences.
“Without it, there wouldn’t have been enough votes to pass the bill,” said state Sen. Jean Leising of the casino/racino exemption.
Leising, a Republican from Oldenburg, succeeded in tacking on several amendments to the bill before it passed out of the Senate Wednesday on a 29-21 vote.
One of them exempts charity gaming events, including church bingos, from the ban. She wants them to have the same smoking pass that casinos and racinos would get.
“If you exempt one, but don’t exempt the other, you’re setting up a barrier to fair competition,” Leising said.
Authors of the smoking ban bill say they held their noses when they added the casino/racino exemption to what they hoped would have been a more comprehensive ban to cover all workplaces.
Bill co-author Rep. Eric Turner, a Republican from Cicero, is skeptical of the gaming industry’s claims about how much damage a smoking ban would do if applied to them.
“They say 20 percent of their customers are smokers,” Turner said, referring to a number that comes from the American Gaming Association. “But what about the number of people who don’t go to casinos because of the smoke? Wouldn’t those people start going if the casinos were smoke-free?”
The carve-out for casinos and racinos was used by ban opponents to argue that bill supporters were hypocritical in their claims that the bill is needed protect Hoosiers from second-hand smoke.
“If you’re a gambler, it’s OK to die. If that’s what you’re after, vote for the bill,” said Sen. Mike Young, an Indianapolis Republican who argued against the bill on the Senate.
For the past six years, state Rep. Charlie Brown, a Gary Democrat, has tried to get an exemption-free smoking ban bill passed. This year, he said he was willing to exempt the casinos and racinos — including all restaurants and bars on their properties — if it meant moving the smoking ban ahead in the legislative process.
“I realize that we are going to have to crawl before we walk to get to that point,” Brown told the Associated Press.
The gaming industry has tried to make their case to be ban-free in other states with smoke-free laws.
Last year, the Illinois legislature considered a bill to allow smoking in casinos so gamblers would stop fleeing to the smoking gaming venues in Indiana, Iowa and Missouri.
The bill died, but its supporters have vowed to revive the legislation.