ST. LOUIS — The Missouri Senate's culture is "not conducive to getting stuff done," the St. Louis Cardinals' president said this week, as a bill to legalize sports betting sought by his and other professional sports teams died.
Cardinals President Bill DeWitt III said he and other owners would try to push through the legislation next year, but would consider an initiative petition process, which would put the question before voters, should that fail again.
“I still continue to believe that the legislative approach is the best way to do this,” he said. “But if we just keep running into a wall every year, we would have to seriously consider an alternative approach.”
The Missouri General Assembly failed to pass legislation to legalize sports wagering in its annual session that wrapped up Friday. A bill that would have legalized sports betting passed the Missouri House, but ended up stalling in the Senate.
“It’s very disappointing,” DeWitt said. “We’ve been at this now for a few years. We’ve had several chances at it. All of our neighboring states have it. We were very hopeful this year and it didn’t happen.”
DeWitt said the General Assembly's inability to pass the sports betting legislation likely goes beyond the issue itself, and is a result of political infighting within the Senate. That's been a battle between a main Republican caucus and a smaller caucus of conservative senators, with a new committee of St. Louisans, some connected to Washington University, seeking to reshape the Senate amid the stalemate.
“There’s probably a bigger issue here in regards to the Senate. In talking to our lobbyists, they see a culture there that’s not conducive to getting stuff done," DeWitt said.
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