Topeka — A new compromise bill extending the Kansas Lottery's life won easy Senate approval Tuesday but faced uncertainty in the House, where sentiment persists for using lottery revenue to subsidize Kansas airfares.
"I honestly don't know what's going to happen," House Speaker Kent Glasscock, R-Manhattan, said after the Senate approved the measure 31-9. A vote is expected Wednesday in the 125-member House, where the bill would need 63 votes to go to Gov. Bill Graves.
The compromise was the second drafted by House and Senate negotiators charged with reconciling differences between the two chambers' versions of a bill keeping the Lottery in business after its scheduled shutdown on July 1, 2002.
Last week, the Senate rejected the conference committee's first proposal, which included a House-approved provision to devote $4 million in lottery revenues to airfare subsidies.
House negotiators then withdrew the airfare proposal, which had never been debated in the Senate.
Wichita legislators, including the Republican sponsor, Rep. Carlos Mayans, contend the state could stimulate air traffic and economic development by lowering airfares in Kansas.
Mayans, for whom the measure has been dubbed "Air Mayans," said he hoped the House would send a message to the Senate that the airfare proposal is important. But he said the House would approve the lottery bill eventually without his plan.
Rep. Tony Powell, R-Wichita, said: "The Senate's made its views pretty clear on Air Mayans. I think we need to be realistic."
The rest of the bill is unchanged from the conference committee's first version, including a six-year extension of the lottery to July 2008.
Other provisions would ban unsolicited lottery advertising by phone or e-mail, bar the lottery from selling tickets in vending machines or operating interactive video terminals and require a security audit of the agency at least once every three years.
Sen. Rip Gooch, D-Wichita, one of the negotiators, refused to sign the compromise because it lacked the airfare proposal. Gooch wanted time to gauge support for a separate bill on the issue, now before the Senate Commerce Committee.
Other senators said they voted against the bill because they oppose gambling.
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