PEORIA, Ill. — When Illinois Gov. Patrick Quinn vetoed Senate Bill 1849, a controversial gambling expansion bill, on Aug. 28, millions of dollars in new funding for agricultural interests such as 4-H, county Soil and Water Conservation Districts (SWCDs) and county fairs were lost to the stroke of a pen.

He and legislators who stood against the “gaming bill,” including state Sen. Darin LaHood (R-District 37), called the veto the only morally correct decision to make – even as the state grapples with a historic $9 billion budget deficit.

Quinn, who had threatened to veto a similar expansion, SB 744, last year, lambasted the bill in his veto message for its “absence of strict ethical standards and comprehensive regulatory oversight” over proposed new casinos. He said the bill failed to keep corruption from an industry susceptible to nefarious activity.

“Illinois cannot gamble its way out of our fiscal problems,” he stated, while encouraging lawmakers to get to work on the issue of pension reform. “Even a casino on every street corner cannot repair the state’s $83 billion unfunded pension liability. I urge the members of the Illinois House and Senate to address the most pressing issue of our time – comprehensive public pension reform.”

SB 1849 would have created new casinos in Chicago, Lake County, Rockford, Danville and Chicago’s south suburbs, along with allowing slot machines at horse racing tracks, permitting poker machines in bars, truck stops and other locations and increasing individual casinos’ gaming positions from 1,200 to 1,600. Supporters claimed the measure would create up to $1 billion in new revenue and 100,000 jobs for the Illinois economy, while the bill’s detractors feared expanded gambling would lead to more crime and social problems.

“The reason I voted against the bill (at the end of the Senate’s spring session) was that I think we have too much gambling in Illinois right now,” said LaHood, a Peoria attorney.

“This would be a massive expansion of gambling in our state, and I don’t want to turn Illinois into the Las Vegas of the Midwest.

“I think the gambling bill is full of false promises, and if (Illinois had) a $9 billion surplus instead of deficit, we would never be looking at this gambling bill. We’re really not addressing the fundamental problems of getting our spending under control, reforming our pension system and balancing the budget.”

Terry Bogner, chair of the board of the Marshall-Putnam County SWCD, met with LaHood and other state legislators earlier this year to express his support for SB 1849 because of the $12.5 million included in the bill for the 97 SWCDs across Illinois.

“I’m not saying I’m a big advocate of gambling, but gambling is the only thing that we’ve been able to tie onto for revenue,” Bogner said in July. “We had always received our (funding) from the general revenue fund for the state, which is almost completely dried up. This year we are slated to get only around $41,000, and that money is basically coming from Partners in Conservation and not the general fund.”

LaHood acknowledged he had met with those supportive of agriculture and conservation who stood to benefit from the bill, but in the end had to first consider the welfare of the general public when casting his vote against the bill.

“I’m very supportive of the agriculture provisions, I think they are good things. They need funding, but in my view, this is not good public policy to tie (gambling and ag provisions) together. It’s a political way and a legislative way to try and bring members from rural parts of the state on to the bill,” LaHood said.

“If I was able to offer an amendment to split out and fund the agricultural interests from the gambling bill, I think you’d see it pass overwhelmingly. If you took Interstate 80 and below, I think you’d find almost universal support for (ag funding). With Chicago controlling much of the legislature, from my perspective agricultural interests haven’t gotten the appropriate level of awareness or made a priority as they should.”

Democratic Rep. Lou Lang of Skokie, the chief sponsor of SB 1849, called Quinn’s decision to veto the bill “disappointing, but not surprising,” while questioning Quinn’s presumption that gambling in Illinois is attracting “mafia” to the state.

Lang indicated it may be possible to rally enough support to override the governor’s veto in the legislature’s November veto session. It would, however, be a tough hill to climb to muster the three-fifths votes required to overturn the veto, according to LaHood, especially in the Illinois Senate, where the measure was approved by a slim 30-26 margin.

Quinn, a Democrat, vowed to work with lawmakers to craft a better bill that “can meet all the requirements of integrity and also make sure the money goes to schools and education,” according to Illinois Issues magazine, a publication of the Center for State Policy and Leadership at the University of Illinois-Springfield.