Lawmakers Eye Sports Betting Tax To Pay For Water Conservation

DENVER, CO – By John Herrick for The Colorado Independent. Lawmakers are considering a plan to legalize sports betting in Colorado and ask voters to approve a tax on the betting that would be earmarked for water projects.

Betting is currently allowed in casinos, but a bill introduced Thursday would expand it to a range of sports, such as collegiate basketball, and allow betting with online apps.

The bill would also refer a measure to the November ballot asking voters for a 10% tax on net proceeds from sports betting, most of which would be dedicated to managing the state’s water supplies. The tax is projected to raise up to $10 million annually.

The bill arrives with only about two weeks left in the session, but it already has support from key Democratic and Republican leaders in the House and Senate.

In 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a ban on sports betting. Since then, 40 states and the District of Columbia have proposed or enacted laws to legalize, study or regulate sports betting, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Some lawmakers may want to see the revenue fund other priorities, such as transportation projects and K-12 education — programs the state has long struggled to fully fund.

But Majority Leader Alec Garnett, a Democrat from Denver who is sponsoring the bill, said the money would be best used to help pay for the Colorado Water Plan, an unfunded roadmap, finalized in 2015, to prevent statewide water shortfalls. State researchers expect that by 2050 or sooner, the state could experience water shortages because of population growth and climate change.

The water plan is projected to cost about $100 million per year for the next 30 years, totaling $3 billion by 2050, to fully implement. The biggest expenses are expected to be payments to farmers to lease their water to maintain stream flows and construction of dams for water storage.

Lawmakers this year are proposing to allot historic amounts to implement the water plan — approximately $27 million, more than double the amount the water plan has received in past years — but it’s still a far cry from the $100 million-per-year goal.

And Garnett acknowledged that $10 million per year from sports-betting taxes would be a relatively small contribution, but, he argued, it will at least be a consistent funding source.
“That’s something that the Colorado Water Plan hasn’t had yet,” he told The Colorado Independent.

READ MORE in The Colorado Independent.