There is plenty to digest in the massive gaming legislation that passed the General Assembly this week. There are provisions with local and statewide impact contained in the bill.
One item to discuss is the local share assessment (LSA, or host fee) that casinos pay to their host county and municipality. The bill broadens the LSA impact in some cases where counties that lie next to host counties may get a portion of the money, cities that are near casinos but don’t necessarily host them may get a share, etc.
Note that a year ago we wrote about the Supreme Court decision that struck down the LSA language because of uniformity issues. For municipalities that hosted a casino, they received 2% of gross terminal revenue or $10 million, whichever was greater. The proposed legislation would make it $10 million annually, but the money would not come from gross terminal revenue, but rather a slot operation fee, which would be a 20% levy against the casino’s $50 million license fee.
Counties (there never was an “either or” provision, they always received a percentage of gross terminal revenue) will largely remain the same.
This means locally Allegheny County will get around $5.5 million or so (2% of GTR) and Pittsburgh will get $10 million a year (from the license fee) under the proposed bill.
