Roundup: Sports betting surge fuels gambling addiction worries, addressing child care shortages and the car line overtakes iconic yellow school bus
Route Fifty
A news publication covering trends and best practices in state and local government across the U.S.
It’s Saturday, Feb. 10, and we’d like to welcome you to the weekly State and Local Roundup. ?We'll start with—of course—the Super Bowl, a spectacle that reveals a lot about choices state governments have made in recent years about sports betting.
Experts expect Americans to bet a record $23 billion on Sunday’s game. States have fueled the massive uptick in online and in-person wagering on sporting contests, even though they have received relatively modest revenue increases and have seen dramatic increases in reports of people struggling with gambling addiction.
The showdown between the Kansas City Chiefs and the San Francisco 49ers on Sunday takes place in Las Vegas, a city that the National Football League and other professional sports leagues shunned for decades because of its famous ties to gambling, and sports betting in particular.
League commissioners long worried that gambling on games could undermine the integrity of their sports, which would, in turn, drive away fans. And, of course, betting had led to major scandals that people talk about decades later, from the 1919 Black Sox to Pete Rose.
That all changed when the Supreme Court sided with New Jersey as it challenged Nevada’s exclusive legal right to allow sports gambling, which Congress put in place in 1992. Suddenly, any state could allow sports betting, and almost all of them jumped at the chance. Lobbyists from gaming companies like DraftKings and FanDuel swarmed state capitols to legalize the new form of gaming and to secure favorable conditions. Today, 38 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico all allow people to bet on the Super Bowl and other sports events, and several of the remaining states are considering similar moves. (Two notable holdouts, though, are California and Missouri, the home states of the Super Bowl teams.)
The speed of the about-face was remarkable. As Religion News Service points out, it took nearly 60 years for 40 states to adopt government-run lotteries, following New Hampshire’s decision to set one up in 1964. It only took five years for sports betting to spread that far.
Continue reading here.
News to Use
Trends, Common Challenges, Cool Ideas, FYIs and Notable Events
- RAIL SAFETY: A year after East Palestine derailment, rail industry blocks new safety rules. Norfolk Southern’s top executive has promised change since the train accident a year ago. But in the nation’s capital, company representatives often have sounded a more defiant note, joining some of the nation’s leading freight railroads in a bid to weaken newly proposed safety legislation, reports The Washington Post. The target of the lobbying is a bipartisan proposal that aims to toughen rail inspections, improve derailment-detection technology and ensure greater safeguards for hazardous materials. Over the past year, the nation’s five largest rail operators together spent roughly $17 million to lobby lawmakers, while donating generously to key members of Congress who oversee transportation issues, according to federal records. In doing so, rail industry lobbyists also fought the Biden administration on even the most basic upgrades, from efforts to ensure that engineers have special breathing equipment onboard to new rules that would require miles-long trains to be staffed with more than one person.
- CHILD CARE: State legislatures turn to tax credits to ease child care shortage. Several proposals to address child care shortages are making the rounds in state legislatures across the country. In Nebraska, a bill would implement a program similar to one in Kentucky that covers the costs of child care for child care workers. In Missouri, two proposals moved forward on Tuesday, a package of tax credits meant to expand child care options and a separate property tax exemption for child care providers. Specifically, the former bill would offer three types of credits: for taxpayers who donate to support child care centers, for employers who make investments in child care needs for their employees and for child care providers. Meanwhile, Utah is expected to lose an estimated $400 million in federal funds for child care services after COVID-19 federal subsidies end. To address a looming child care crisis, the legislature is considering a bill to take empty space in state-owned office buildings and retrofit them for child care facilities for state employees and other Utahns. It would start as a pilot project with six sites in Salt Lake County. The bill would also include options for public-private partnerships, in which employers could sponsor facilities for their employees.
- HEALTH CARE: South warms to expanded health benefits. House speakers in three Republican-controlled states—Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi—have said in recent weeks that they need to consider covering more people through their state-run health insurance programs, reports Politico. Their comments represent a stark departure from more than a decade of lawmakers in conservative statehouses arguing vehemently against expanding Medicaid or similar benefits—many of them because of a reflexive revulsion to Obamacare. The shift is partly a byproduct of a historic realignment that has seen more working-class voters gravitate to the GOP, largely driven by an affinity for the populist rhetoric of Donald Trump. The changing attitudes could reshape health care in the South by allowing nearly half a million uninsured people to obtain coverage, improving the finances of some of the nation’s most beleaguered hospitals and helping communities with high rates of chronic disease, maternal mortality and avoidable deaths.
Find more News to Use here.
Picture of the Week
As the top elected official of Harris County, the most populous in Texas, Lina Hidalgo surprised many people last summer when she announced that she had checked herself into a residential mental health clinic for serious depression. She had been struggling privately for years, even as she stepped forward assertively to preside over Houston’s response to the coronavirus pandemic and help residents throughout the county deal with flooding and a devastating winter freeze. Since her return from nearly two months of treatment at the clinic, reports The New York Times, Hidalgo has spoken openly and often about her mental health, making her struggles an increasingly central part of her political identity. Hidalgo, 32, has added her name to a growing list of politicians—most of them Democrats—who have chosen to be public about their mental health. But the approach remains politically risky. And while the number of politicians who are willing to discuss their mental health treatment has grown, it remains small.
领英推è
Government in Numbers
53%
The percentage of American students driving or being driven to school in a private vehicle, according to an analysis by The Washington Post of the recently revamped National Household Travel Survey. It marks the first time on record that most Americans were transported by private transportation and not the iconic yellow school bus. The coronavirus pandemic accelerated a shift long in the making, said Dave Cowan with the nonprofit Safe Routes Partnership. Fifty years ago, feet and pedals dominated the school transportation scene, but that depended on schools being built in the heart of dense neighborhoods. “We’ve moved our schools to where land is less expensive and more expansive, but less accessible to those walking and bicycling,†Cowan said. What’s more, drivers have been some of the most in-demand workers in the entire country. To papier-maché over the driver shortfall, schools are slashing bus service, changing hours, canceling days and even paying parents to drive their own offspring.
ICYMI
The program serving 23 million low-income households will begin winding down this month. It is set to run out of money in April unless Congress can reach an agreement to increase funding.
BY KERY MURAKAMI
When a single parking space adds tens of thousands of dollars to a residential development, those costs get passed on to residents.
BY MOLLY BOLAN
The signatories say the agreement’s focus on building emissions will signal to manufacturers that there will be a robust market for heat pumps in the coming years.
BY DANIEL C. VOCK
Thanks for spending part of your weekend with us. This is an abbreviated version of our Roundup, but you can read the full newsletter here. While you're at it, sign up to get this and/or other Route Fifty newsletters delivered right to your inbox here.