Atlantic City Casino Property Relief Bill Shadowed By Threat of County Lawsuit

Atlantic County officials are preparing to wreak a suit against the State of New Jersey. That’s if lawmakers straits legislation to lower the amount of holding taxes the ix casinos inward Atlantic City are required to pay off inward 2022.

Atlantic County, rest home to the resort town, receives 13.5 percent of the payment-in-lieu-of-taxes (PILOT) that the Atlantic Ocean City casinos pay to each one year.

The PILOT system — reached between the casinos and New island of Jersey inward 2016 inward response to Little Phoebe casinos closure between 2014 through and through that twelvemonth — determines how often the resorts testament collectively pay inwards taxes. It’s based on the prior year’s sum up gaming revenues kept by the casinos.

A current elbow grease inward the capital of New Jersey uppercase seeks to withdraw iGaming and online sports betting revenues from the calculation. If the lawmaking passes and is signed past New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy (D) — the regulator expressing livelihood for the measure out — Atlantic City casinos’ 2022 holding task liability would be slashed from around $165 meg to $110 million.

County Opposition

Longtime Atlantic County Executive Dennis Levinson has been at betting odds with res publica officials ever so since the PILOT was first-class honours degree passed. He says efforts to further assist the casinos will amount at the disbursal of county taxpayers. Levinson said this hebdomad that if the PILOT amendments pass, the land will be ready to sue the state.

The nonpartisan New Jersey Office of Legislative Services (OLS) forecasts that removing iGaming and internet sportsbook revenue from the attribute tax deliberation testament economise the casinos $30 jillion to $50 gazillion each year through and through PILOT’s 2026 termination. That’s on with the estimated $55 billion inward savings inwards 2022,

Levinson believes the casinos and res publica should uphold the terms they agreed upon in 2016. The New Jersey Assembly and Senate are expected to use up up the PILOT bills on Monday.

OLS projects that if the PILOT body structure is revamped, Atlantic County testament receive $17.5 meg next yr instead of around $20.8 million. Levinson says in the years ahead, the county’s around 270,000 residents should await the county to escape come out on a minimum of $5 zillion annually.

The proposed changes to the PILOT prioritize the interests of the state, casinos, and Atlantic metropolis to the detriment of Atlantic Ocean County taxpayers,” Levinson argued in a varsity letter to Murphy. “How can buoy these residents live so easily ignored?”

Levinson is requesting Murphy only contract a PILOT amendment that mandates Atlantic Ocean County receive its full attribute tax parcelling below the bill’s pilot formulation.

‘Preposterous’ Allegations

Outgoing Democratic state Senate President Sir Leslie Stephen Sweeney, one of the PILOT alteration backers, made a big take recently. He said that without a PILOT adjustment, as many as quaternity Atlantic City casinos could follow on the verge of closing.

Though he failed to bring home the bacon any specific information to back upward that statement, the older adage, “As Atlantic Ocean metropolis goes, South island of Jersey goes,” has prompted some land lawmakers into mount the PILOT effort.

Levinson, however, says Sweeney’s gambling casino shutdown statement is a “preposterous assertion.”

This money is simply going to the casinos’ pockets,” Levinson opined. “That’s what it comes mastered to: it’s a money grab.”

The casinos postulate that their businesses are stock-still reeling — despite record porcine gaming revenue numbers — from the impacts of COVID-19. Casino Association of New island of Jersey President Joe Lupo argues that the casinos hold “paid our reasonable share” inward holding taxes since 2016.