Re: Mountaineer Status?
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Its a shame that the vote was put to the WV county... And since when do counties rights matter [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img] I know the state would have loved it, as well as MD/VA.
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That was the only chance it would have had. The main try by the opponents of this bill was to make it a state wide vote.
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For many years, the statewide legislation was always successfully blocked - too much opposition. The breakthrough came early this year, when the legislature passed a bill that allowed the four individual counties that already had races/slots to vote on an expansion to table games.
One key motivator was that just across the border, Pennsylvania had begun to extend their own gambling into slots casinos, and racetrack/slots casinos. Once western PA had "racinos", the WV racetrack casinos would begin to lose business, as obviously PA customers wouldn't be driving west/south-west into the WV panhandle if they could get the same thing locally. Metropolitan Pittsburgh, for example, accounted for 50-60% of Wheeling Downs customer base.
So those counties in the WV panhandle lobbied really hard - essentially getting WV to save their jobs. And it worked - they found the county-vote compromise.
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