TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) - A bill designed to revive a Kansas City-area dog and horse racing park by lowering taxes on its slot machines was approved by the Kansas Senate on Thursday.
The move is intended to help The Woodlands racing park in Kansas City, Kansas, which closed in 2008 following the passage of a 2007 law that allowed slot machines at tracks but turned over 40 percent of the net machine revenues to the state.
The bill, which goes to the House after the Senate’s 24-12 vote, would decrease the state’s tax on The Woodlands’ slot machines to 22 percent, which might spur the necessary investment to bring the park back to life, said Republican Sen. Steve Fitzgerald from Leavenworth.
In the Senate GOP caucus meeting before the session, Fitzgerald said he believes he won his 2012 election in a largely Democratic district due to his promise for reviving the park.
“If I don’t bring home the bread, or the bacon, whichever this is, it’s not going to be good,” Fitzgerald said at the meeting.
Re-opening the tracks would also help add value to the state’s horse breeding industry because racing horses “are really large pets worth nothing unless they can take them to a horse race and race them,” Fitzgerald said.
Kansas horse breeders have struggled to remain profitable in recent years because they have to send their horses to out-of-state race tracks, Senate Minority Leader Anthony Hensley said during debate on the bill.
“It’s time we let their horses back into the state. It’s time we make this industry more viable,” the Topeka Democrat said.
But Senate President Susan Wagle, a Wichita Republican, said she opposed the bill because it would allow The Woodlands to operate as many as 2,800 slot machines, which she said are “extremely addictive.”
“People who are addicted can’t leave the machine, they put on a diaper and they sit in front of that machine,” Wagle said.
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