Update on Illinois
On January 31, iDEA’s Illinois lobbyist met with Sen. Cristina Castro to ask her to sponsor this year’s continued effort to pass the supplier renewal fee fix bill and to discuss iGaming prospects.
Sen. Castro chairs the Senate Executive Committee, which handles all gaming legislation in the Senate. Chairwoman Castro agreed to file the bill, which she did later that day as SB 323. A copy of SB 323 can be accessed here.
We have also confirmed that Sen. Castro intends to file an iGaming bill this year. The current draft of the bill can be accessed here. As Illinois moves through this year’s budget process, there is a possibility that the Pritzker Administration may be looking for additional revenue and that iGaming legalization could be given more serious consideration this year than originally anticipated.
On January 31, iDEA’s Illinois lobbyist also met newly appointed House Gaming Committee Chairman Daniel Didech to discuss the supplier renewal fee bill. Chairman Didech agreed to serve as the lead House sponsor of SB 323, and he asked iDEA to speak with a few additional members of the Committee about the bill. We are in the process of arranging these meetings. In the meantime, a House version of the bill will be filed by Rep. Bob Rita sometime this week. We did not spend a lot of time discussing iGaming with Chairman Didech (because the focus of the meeting was the supplier renewal fee bill), but we believe he will be much more supportive of iGaming that other House members with whom have worked in the past.