Major players in race for North Jersey casino?

The other leader isn’t budging in his insistence that only companies with a majority interest in an existing Atlantic City casino — which he says have invested significantly in the city over the years and created thousands of jobs — should get an exclusive crack at building billion-dollar gambling palaces in the northern part of the state.

The stalemate between Assembly Speaker Vincent Prieto of Secaucus, who favors the more expansive approach, and Senate President Stephen Sweeney, of Gloucester County, who is pushing the Atlantic City-centered approach, amounts to a high-stakes staring match that is almost certain to extend into the next legislative session, which begins Tuesday. Neither said he is concerned about the clock running out on the current session this week.

That’s because both men say they are confident they will have more than enough votes in the new legislative session to achieve the 60 percent “supermajority” that would be needed by midyear to get a referendum on the Nov. 8 ballot to voters statewide.

“It would be an easy lift to get to 48 and 24,” Prieto said Thursday, referring to the votes that would be needed in the Assembly and Senate, respectively, to reach that supermajority. “The world doesn’t end on Jan. 11. We have time. We just need to get it right.”

But while some previously prickly issues separating the competing plans appear to have been resolved, or nearly so — including how much of the hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenue to be generated by the new casinos would be diverted to help revitalize Atlantic City — the disagreement over who should be eligible to receive a North Jersey casino license appears daunting.

Aware of interest

As a Hudson County politician, Prieto is well aware of the interest that Paul Fireman, the founder and former chairman of Reebok International, has in building a multibillion dollar casino resort next to his Liberty National Golf Course in Jersey City. The Assembly speaker said Thursday that Wynn is another “of the individuals who has shown interest” in submitting a bid for a North Jersey casino if the opportunity were to arise in 2017. Triple Five, which is developing the American Dream Meadowlands shopping and entertainment project, also has expressed interest, Prieto said.

Hard Rock officials last year announced a planned casino partnership with Jeff Gural, the operator of The Meadowlands Racetrack, as an extension of the new grandstand that opened at the racetrack in 2013.

Adelson said in 2014 that he would consider making a North Jersey casino bid — with a caveat that he would be concerned that such a development might soon have to compete with a Manhattan casino that he predicted would be a likely response by New York.

Reached by phone in Las Vegas on Thursday, Adelson declined to comment.

Speaking to The Record’s editorial board on Wednesday, Sweeney used a potential Adelson bid to underpin his argument for his own approach.

If Adelson were to open a Meadowlands casino, Sweeney said, he undoubtedly would then entice some of those customers with free trips to his other properties, such as Sands Bethlehem, a casino just a few miles west of the border in Pennsylvania.

Sweeney, who is widely expected to run for governor next year, said there would be “synergy” under his plan between the North Jersey casinos and the Atlantic City properties, with the former enticing its customers to spend their money in the state rather than elsewhere.

“I think you have to support businesses that stayed here, invested here, took a risk here,” Sweeney said. “What you’re talking about is the possibility of people coming in from out of state that — this is cherry picking. This is coming in and trying to get the cream off the top. The people that are here are known by the regulators; they know the process, they know the system.”

Sweeney also said that Atlantic City interests such as MGM, Caesars, Boyd Gaming, and Mohegan Sun have the capital and stature to produce a pair of major casino bids even with a ban on out-of-state casino interests.

Matter of compromise

Sweeney and Prieto each continued to insist he has been the one more willing to compromise. Prieto cited as an example his decision to seek two North Jersey casinos instead of the three he first suggested, while Sweeney noted that he once was willing to allow only one casino in the north but has since agreed to two.

“Compromise is when you meet,” Sweeney said. “We’ve met on a lot of things. But if you focus on the things I tell you I can’t move on, that I can’t compromise on, then you’re never really going to come to the finish line.”

Prieto countered that “I’ve always said, I’m all about compromise.”

Sweeney said that Governor Christie — who under state law is not formally involved in the referendum process — has not yet attempted to broker a solution to the standoff.

Sweeney said that he is considering setting a minimum bid for a North Jersey casino at $1 billion and a tax rate midway between the 8 percent that the Atlantic City casinos currently pay and the tax rates of more than 50 percent that New York and Pennsylvania receive from their casinos.

Each of those approaches, if folded into enabling legislation in 2017 should voters approve the ballot question this fall, would ease Prieto’s concerns that a high tax rate would encourage casino operators to build much more modest facilities in North Jersey consisting of slot machines and little else — a scenario that Prieto referred to dismissively as “slots in a box.”

Atlantic City could receive up to $3 billion over a period of 15 years under Sweeney’s plan, and an unspecified but potentially similar amount under Prieto’s version.

Two paths to ballot

The Legislature had two ways of getting a referendum on the November 2016 ballot to amend the state constitution to allow casino gambling outside Atlantic City. The first was to approve the measure by simple majority votes in consecutive sessions. With no time to reconcile the bills before the new session starts on Tuesday, each chamber can approve a 2016 ballot question with a three-fifths supermajority in a single session.

With the Democratic edge in the Assembly set to increase to 52-28 in the new session, Prieto said he has “wiggle room” to get the votes he needs even with the likely defection of a few Democratic votes from the Atlantic City area.

Sweeney suggested he could muster as many as 30 Senate votes for his resolution if it comes up for a vote as expected on Monday — and he predicted that it also would pass in the Assembly if Prieto posted that version.

Prieto said his bill also is scheduled for a vote on Monday. But the issue is moot unless one leader capitulates and puts the other chamber’s bill up for a floor vote, something that neither Sweeney nor Prieto seems inclined to do.