Tysons Casino Bill's Fate Decided By VA Senate Finance Committee

RICHMOND, VA — Members of the Virginia Senate Committee on Finance and Appropriations voted on Tuesday to hold over Senate Bill 675 on a 13-2 vote, effectively killing the bill for the 2024 legislative session.

The bill would have authorized the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors to put a referendum on a future ballot on the question of whether a casino should be built in Tysons.

• Yays: Boysko, Deeds, Ebbin, Favola, Hashmi, Locke, Lucas, Marsden, McDougle, Obenshain, Pillion, Reeves, and Stuart
• Nays: McPike and Surovell

Sen. Jennifer Boysko (D-Herndon) offered an amendment to pass by the bill indefinitely, which was defeated on a 5 to 9 vote, with one abstention. If it had been passed by, the bill would've been effectively dead.

Last Thursday, the Senate Resources Subcommittee voted 4-0 to hold over Senate Bill 675 for the next legislative session. While it was rare for a committee to reject the subcommittee's recommendation, it was possible for the finance committee to do that.

Holding the bill over means that consideration of the bill is over for the current legislative session, but the general assembly could reconsider the bill next year.

Marsden, the chief patron of SB 675, defended his bill, saying that it would create a new revenue stream that would offset a drop in commercial tax revenue caused by high vacancy rates. It would also help Metro, which was seeing a decline in ridership.

"This is nothing but democracy," he said. "It's allowing local control of the process from here on out to do their own analytics, their own examination of this to determine whether they want to go down this road. And that's up to them. I'm neutral on that. That's for the local government to decide."

Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell (D-Alexandria), who voted against the bill being held over, said that a Fairfax casino would generate about $200 million in state revenue in casino and gaming taxes, as well as taxes for Fairfax County.

"Obviously, there's a disagreement within the county about it," Surovell said. "But I can tell you that people in my part of the county don't feel the same way as people in the other part of the county."

The MGM National Harbor casino, which is located in Maryland across the Potomac River from Surovell's district, brought in $884.46 million in 2022 from slot games and table games, according to the University of Nevada-Las Vegas Center for Gaming Research.

Prior to the vote, Sen. Barbara Favola (D-Arlington) spoke to concerns that adopting SB 675 would create a dangerous precedent for localities seeking casinos.

"We passed legislation that allowed for casinos two years ago," she said. "We identified four or five jurisdictions and those jurisdictions wanted that economic bounce. They wanted to plan for it. They wanted the revenue that was going to come from it, and they asked the General Assembly to please include them in the legislation."

Favola's concern was that the bill would alter the established process for a locality to request a casino.

"What this bill does is it it creates new legislation with new criteria that's unique to a certain neighborhood, not just the county but a certain neighborhood, within Fairfax County," she said. "It is going to set a precedent for every other jurisdiction in the Commonwealth to come in with specific criteria to their location."

Language in Marsden's bill specifically limited the location to a parcel on Leesburg Pike/Route 7 in Tysons.

Marsden and Del. Wren Williams (R-Stuart) introduced nearly identical bills during the 2023 legislative session, seeking to put a casino somewhere on Metro's Silver Line outside the Capital Beltway/I-495 in Fairfax County. Those bills were quickly withdrawn, but Marsden said he would reintroduce the bill in 2024.

Last September, Patch broke the story that Comstock Holding Companies was planning to build a casino at or near Metro's Wiehle-Reston East Station.

In support of its efforts to build a casino, Comstock contributed more than $1 million to candidates running in the 2023 election cycle and legislators serving in the 2024 general assembly.

Related:

• 'Kill Casino Bill,' Hundreds Call On Lawmakers To Oppose SB 675
• Tysons Casino Bill May Still Be Alive In VA Legislature: Lawmakers
• Tysons Casino Bill On Hold After Subcommittee Vote; Opponents React
• Tysons Casino Proposal Delayed A Year In General Assembly

Read all of Patch's reporting on Comstock Companies' plan to build a casino on Metro's Silver Line in Fairfax County at Silver Line Casino.