Within the span of several days, Superstorm Sandy racked up a $42 billion bill for New York State alone. Governor Cuomo announced that the state’s emergency expenditures and lost tax revenues from the storm threatened to double New York’s projected deficit, which had already been estimated to be $1 billion.

Wasting no time at all, advocates of gambling market met with state leaders to search at techniques to speedily boost state revenues from gambling operations.

As of now, New York State enables gambling in limited types. The state has 29,000 electronic gambling machines, more than any other state inside the northeast such as Atlantic City, in addition to nine racetrack casinos-“racinos”-where slot machines and also other electronic games can be found alongside horse racetracks. You can find also various full-fledged casinos upstate on Indian Reservation territory. The New York State constitution forbids casino gambling, but casino advocates are fighting for an amendment towards the constitution that might let casinos to become constructed outdoors of Indian Reservations.

“The state needs cash, we’ve been very good partners, we’re right here and we’re ready to go forward swiftly,” mentioned James Featherstonhaugh, a Albany lobbyist and president with the New York Gaming Association, which represents the nine racetrack casinos.

Earlier this year, in the behest on the Cuomo administration, the state legislature made the initial measures amend the constitution by passing the proposed amendment in March by a wide margin. The legislature will need to vote around the issue again in the spring, and if that passes, the amendment will probably be up for public vote the following November.

In his State in the State Address in January, Cuomo mentioned that expanding casino gambling could result in an added $1 billion in economic activity if “New York can do gaming correct.”

Eleven years ago, inside the wake of 9/11, casino advocates made comparable efforts to expand casino gambling that resulted inside the greatest expansion of gambling in the state’s background, which included permitting racinos and casinos on Indian Reservations. And because of Sandy, casino advocates might have the ability to persuade the legislature to put casinos in downstate regions hit tough by the storm under the claim of required financial improvement.

In 2001, then-State Sen. Thomas Duane named the tie-in amongst the terror attacks and gambling expansion “a complete disgrace.”

“I do not see any way that our passing a resolution to permit men and women to vote on gambling to be fulfilling our patriotic duty,” he told his colleagues that October evening. “We’re employing the guise from the terrible tragedy … to produce New York one particular from the most significant gaming states within the nation.”