With two weeks to go in the 2023 General Assembly session, Richmond appears to be on track to retain the right to hold a second vote on hosting a casino in November.

While it could all change, Richmond gained much needed help from a slim majority of the Senate Finance Committee.

Last week, the committee voted 8-7 to kill Petersburg Democratic state Sen. Joseph D. “Joe” Morrissey’s bill to add the Cockade City to the list of cities allowed to have a casino and authorize that city to host a referendum before Richmond made a second attempt to get voters to approve after a majority rejected a casino plan in 2021.

If the majority holds in the Senate Finance Committee, the same fate would await an identical bill that Petersburg Republican Delegate Kim Taylor successfully pushed through the House on Tuesday.

Petersburg believed it had a good chance to win after signing an agreement with The Cordish Companies of Baltimore to deliver a casino and related developments worth $1.4 billion. Despite the setback, that city is still is likely to hold a November referendum seeking approval from its voters for the Cordish proposal.

Richmond is not guaranteed to retain the right to hold a referendum.

With Gov. Glenn A. Youngkin seeking to lift up Petersburg, the Free Press has been told that some of those who opposed Sen. Morrissey’s bill in the committee could use the Petersburg casino measure as a bargaining chip when the House and Senate conferees meet to finalize the budget.

A year ago, after Sen. Morrissey’s bill appeared to be dead after losing 9-7 in the Finance Committee, budget language revived it. The legislature followed Sen. Jennifer L. McClellan’s advice and directed the powerful Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission to determine if Petersburg could host a successful casino while also blocking Richmond from hosting a second referendum in November 2022.

JLARC earlier conducted a similar study on the five other cities that were approved for casinos in 2020, including Bristol, Danville, Norfolk, Portsmouth and Richmond. Voters in the four other cities approved casinos that year, while Richmond voters narrowly rejected a proposed $564 million casino for South Side in 2021 that Baltimore-based media company Urban One proposed.

This session, Sen. McClellan proved key to mustering the votes to oppose the Morrissey measure. She voted for the Morrissey bill last year, but became the final vote to kill it this year. Her “no” vote frustrated Sen. Morrissey, who claimed Sen. McClellan broke her promise to support his legislation.

Now running in the Feb. 21 special election to fill the 4th Congressional District seat, Sen. McClellan did not directly respond to media requests for comment. However, her legislative aide, Jared Leopold, denied Sen. McClellan made any such promise.

According to Mr. Leopold, Sen. McClellan last year did not have the benefit of the JLARC study, which found that each city could have a successful casino if voters approved.

“Sen. McClellan received feedback from constituents across the region demonstrating that there is no clear consensus at this time on whether a casino should be built in Richmond, Petersburg, both cities, or neither,” Mr. Leopold stated.