Casino

PROVIDENCE — Heading into a one-week recess, Senate leaders yesterday took their cue from the House and put a 24-hour gambling proposal on hold.

While the bill to allow round-the-clock gambling at Twin River and Newport Grand on weekends and the overnight hours before holidays had been scheduled for a Senate vote yesterday, Senate President Joseph A. Montalbano said “we don’t have an agreement with the House.”

Echoing the reasons House Speaker William J. Murphy gave a day earlier, Montalbano said they had yet to agree on how much additional money to give Lincoln and Newport — homes to the two video-slot parlors — to compensate them for the introduction of overnight activities neither community seems to want, including incoming late-night traffic as restaurants close and bars empty out in other cities and towns.

While the Town Council in Lincoln has asked for 4 percent of the additional revenue generated by the expanded hours, Montalbano, whose district includes North Providence and parts of Lincoln, said: “I think that might be a little high. That would be probably, as I gauge it, about $1.2 million. I think that’s high. I think the speaker thinks that’s high.” When asked, however, how much he would consider reasonable, he said: “I’ve got to advocate for as much as I can get for the Town of Lincoln.”

“But the question is whether I can negotiate effectively so that it’s reasonable to the speaker… and then the underlying question always out there is whether [Governor Carcieri] is going to veto the legislation.”

On that point, Carcieri spokesman Jeff Neal said again this week: “Governor Carcieri has repeatedly stated that he cannot support 24-hour gambling in Lincoln or Newport unless the local communities demonstrate their support. At this stage, that community support is not evident.” But, “the bill is still working its way through the legislative process. I expect that the governor will not make a final decision until that process is complete and the bill’s contents are finalized.”

Learning that the vote had been postponed as he was about to enter the Senate chamber yesterday, Sen. Paul Moura, D-East Providence, said: “I’m frustrated …. It’s frustrating because this is costing possibly $300,000 a week … What kind of business is this if you have an opportunity to improve your business, enhance your revenue generating potential and make $300,000 a week and you just choose not to do that?”

Moura also voiced concern that the delay gives “all the antigambling people” more time “to rally around this issue which should have been a very simple issue if we had just moved along.”

kgregg@projo.com