Speaker: Petersburg casino vote on track now due to 'right leadership' in General Assembly

RICHMOND – Petersburg’s casino referendum legislation is expected to get its first legislative look this week, and it apparently will do so with a lot more optimism this year than in the last two sessions.

Virginia House Speaker Don Scott credits that optimism to one word: leadership.

“Last year, it had the wrong people leading it,” Scott, D-Portsmouth, told The Progress-Index last week during an interview in his office. When asked to elaborate on that, he said he felt the forces pushing for the legislation were doing so for political gain, not for the betterment of Petersburg.

“I think right now, the right people are based in the community who really care and don’t bring politics in. It's an economic development opportunity, it's a job-growth opportunity,” Scott said. “I think they had a person coming in, people coming in wanting it to do more with politics.”

Scott did not mention that previous leader by name, but his remarks clearly allude to former Sen. Joe Morrissey, D-Richmond. Morrissey, whose district included Petersburg, waged an all-out campaign to lure a casino to Petersburg that started the day after Richmond voters rejected it for the first time in 2021.

Morrissey, whose professional and personal past made him a political pariah in Richmond, was defeated in last June’s Democratic primary by former Petersburg Del. Lashrecse Aird. Aird, who went on to win the general election to the Senate last November, is one of two chief patrons of the Senate legislation that is anticipated to be heard Tuesday afternoon before a subcommittee of the Senate General Laws & Technology Committee.

The other chief patron is Scott’s fellow Portsmouth legislator, Democratic Sen. Louise Lucas. Lucas, who backed Aird over Morrissey in the June primary, has said as much, telling The Progress-Index last September that Morrissey’s involvement in the Petersburg casino was one of the key factors that doomed it.

Scott said he would “work with anybody to get a good thing done,” and reiterated how he thought a casino would bring economic benefit to Petersburg much like the Rivers Casino in Portsmouth has done for that city. Rivers, which will celebrate its one-year anniversary on Jan. 23, generated $23.85 million in state gaming revenues for Virginia last December – the most of all three casinos now operating in the state.

However, Scott added, he will work for that “good thing” only with people who have the right motivation. Previous Petersburg leadership, he said, did not.

“Some of these people were focused more on photo opps, and being called out in speeches and being elevated,” he explained. “They get in the way and got in the way of progress for the city.”

Senate Bill 628 does not specifically name Petersburg as a casino host, but it sets the parameters that make that possibility more amenable. The legislation removes a minimum 200,000-population stipulation and drops the rate floor for tax-exempted real-estate property in 2017 and poverty rate in 2019. It also adds a requirement that the host city had an unemployment rate of at least 13% in 2020 according to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

In 2020, Petersburg’s unemployment rate was 21.1%.

Scott said in his district, Portsmouth “is winning” with the Rivers Casino. That was because the city voters wanted it.

“I would hope that if Petersburg wants a casino, if the people want to do it, they should be able to do it,” Scott said. “But it has to come from the people who represent them here that want to do it and has to have the right leadership to get it done.”

Petersburg's delegate, Republican Kim Taylor of Dinwiddie County, was the House's champion for the referendum the last two sessions. She said last week that she would not put forth a companion to Aird's bill, opting instead to support it should it reach the House of Delegates.

When Taylor's House version of the casino referendum came up last year, Scott was among 44 Democrats to vote against it. That version, which cleared the House on a 49-44 vote, ultimately died in front of the Senate Finance & Appropriations Committee. Lucas led the push to kill that version; now she chairs the committee.

Bill Atkinson (he/him/his) is an award-winning journalist who covers breaking news, government and politics. Reach him at batkinson@progress-index.com or on X (formerly known as Twitter) at @BAtkinson_PI.

This article originally appeared on The Progress-Index: House speaker says 'right leadership' is pushing Petersburg casino