Betting bill jockeying continues

Benjamin Grove

Monday, June 26, 2000 | 11:17 a.m.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON -- Nevada's senators continue to monitor a bill that would ban betting on college sports in Nevada. The legislation could surface this week.

The bill's primary supporters in the Senate, John McCain, R-Ariz., and Sam Brownback, R-Kan., could try to attach the legislation as an amendment to a Department of Defense spending authorization bill that has been debated in recent days.

The Senate could consider the bill again this week as it considers a number of other spending bills. The Senate will not be in session next week.

Brownback is eager to get a vote on the measure.

"We seek an up-or-down vote," Brownback said on the Senate floor last week, according to the Congressional record. "Let's just press this issue through and see what the will of the body is."

Brownback spokesman Erik Hotmire said, "We're watching very intently. Sen. Brownback is looking forward to this hitting the floor at any point. He would have liked to had a vote on this a month ago."

Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., has said Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., could pursue another option: allow Brownback and McCain to push the betting ban legislation as its own free-standing bill.

But Brownback apparently prefers to introduce it as an amendment to the defense bill in an effort to force a simple "yes or no" vote, say staffers in the Nevada Senate offices. If Brownback introduced the legislation as its own bill, other senators could bog it down with unrelated amendments.

Nevada is the only state that offers legal betting on college sports. Bill supporters say that practice leads to rampant illegal gambling by students on college campuses, led by student bookies with Las Vegas connections.

Nevada's four members in Congress loudly object to the bill, saying it will not curb illegal betting by college students.

Meanwhile one Nevada-friendly member of Congress got an up-close look at sports books this weekend. Sports book operators at the Mirage on Saturday gave Rep. Robert Matsui, D-Calif., a crash course in how bets are made and paid, how odds are set and how regulated betting is.

"This is something that should remain," he said, gazing at the televisions in the Mirage sports book. "We shouldn't tamper with this. This has probably the greatest enforcement and control than anything else."

The House Judiciary Committee has held one hearing on the bill but has not voted on whether to send it to the full House for a vote.

Matsui is a co-sponsor of an alternative bill backed by Nevada's House members, Democrat Shelley Berkley and Republican Jim Gibbons. That bill calls for a study of illegal gambling.