MOScout Daily Update: Tiny Sports Betting Tax Revenue - More on HJR 154 - Rivas on Licensing Controversy and more…
As the legislature finishes spring break, I’m off for the weekend. No Weekly Summary, and no weekend editions coming. Be back Monday!
Tiny Sports Betting Tax Revenue
The News Tribune reports that “Missouri took in just shy of $138,000 in tax revenue from more than $385 million in sports bets in January, the second month of legal wagering in the state. The tax revenue was down almost 75 percent from December, and overall money wagered declined about 29 percent.”
· The low tax revenue can be attributed, at least partially, to the continued use of promotional bets, according to new data from the Missouri Gaming Commission. The state allows sportsbooks to deduct up to 25 percent of their total taxable revenue for the free bets given to incentivize gambling.
Why It Matters
During House Budget markup, concern was voiced by the committee about projections of income from sports betting. “Looks like we’re going to be relying a lot on this sports wagering revenue, which we have absolutely no history on in Missouri. We’re making assumptions about what that number is going to be, but we don’t actually know.”
‘New Questions’ on Marijuana Licensing
The Missouri Independent’s Rebecca Rivasreports on a court’s“sweeping rebuke of the state’s marijuana licensing process, ordering regulators to award Hippos LLC 13 facility licenses after finding the 2019 scoring was inconsistent and, in one case, performed by a grader whose qualifications were never established. The unanimous ruling lands just weeks after a scathing state audit found the same flaws — erratic scoring, poor documentation and a process so opaque it cast doubt on the integrity of the results.”
Why It Matters
Rivas: The decision, issued last week by the Missouri Court of Appeals Southern District, does more than revive Hippos’ long-running challenge over denied cultivation, manufacturing and dispensary licenses. It also undercuts the methodology the Missouri Administrative Hearing Commission has used to resolve cannabis licensing disputes and raises new questions about potentially hundreds of rulings issued in the nearly 850 appeals filed by unsuccessful applicants.
More on HJR 154
Yesterday I wrote that “Rep. Darin Chappell’s HJR 154 would remove the Medicaid expansion language from Missouri’s constitution.” One reader responded, pointing to Medicaid eligibility language that doesn’t get removed.
They’re right. HJR 154 keeps the core sentence from the 2020 amendment saying that adults ages 19–64 in the ACA expansion group, up to 133% of poverty plus the 5% disregard, “shall be eligible” for MO HealthNet.
However, it does remove some of the Medicaid expansion language. The current Missouri Constitution requires the state to “maximize federal funding” for the expansion and says the expansion population cannot be subjected to “greater or additional burdens or restrictions” on eligibility or enrollment. HJR 154 repeals both of those provisions.
Psilocybin Poll
The RAND Institute reports that “support for the legal use of psilocybin mushrooms (23 percent) is much lower than it is for cannabis (65 percent)… Support for the legal use of psilocybin mushrooms is similar to cannabis support in the mid-1990s — just before state medical cannabis laws started to be implemented. It is unclear whether psilocybin will follow a similar trajectory in terms of public opinion or policy changes.”
· Of U.S. adults who have used psilocybin mushrooms, 62 percent support the legal use of psilocybin mushrooms. For comparison, 80 percent of U.S. adults who have used cannabis support its legal use.
Why It Matters
The House has a couple bills dealing with psilocybin which were voted out of committee, though they were not among the 100 that were passed before the break.
eMailbag on Hanaway and Grays
[It] will be interesting if any of the operators or businesses lawyer up, or negotiate a cease fire by taking out their machines.
New Candidate Filings
WITHDRAWN – House 114 – John Jay Lee (Republican)
CD-5 – Berton A. Knox (Republican)
House 75 – Morris Brown (Democrat)
House 113 – Ashley Drury (Democrat)
$5K+ Contributions
Stop the Ban - $400,000 from American Civil Liberties Union Foundation, Inc. (New York, NY).
Stop the Ban - $20,000 from Cynthia Metcalfe.
American Dream PAC (pro-Kehoe) - $10,000 from American Property Casualty Insurance Association PAC (Chicago, IL).
MSCEW PAC Federal Cmte - $20,000 from IBEW PAC VOLUNTARY FUND (Washington, DC).
MSCEW PAC Federal Cmte - $25,000 from IBEW PAC VOLUNTARY FUND (Washington, DC).
MSCEW PAC Federal Cmte - $10,000 from IBEW PAC VOLUNTARY FUND (Washington, DC).
Happy Birthday
Happy birthday to Vivek Malek.
Saturday: Thomas Long, Trent Summers, and Chastity Young.
Sunday: Rep. Bill Hardwick, Nancy Giddens, David Jackson, Will Kraus, Paul LeVota, Steve Hunter, and Sylvester Brown Jr.