Just days after suffering a defeat in a full Pennsylvania Assembly vote, an amendment seeking to legalize multiple forms of online gambling (including online poker) in the state will likely get a chance at a redo, perhaps as early as next week.

The prominent HB 649 pro-gaming bill sponsored by PA Rep. John Payne ran out of steam as a standalone bill last week, but its basics continued forward as one of several gambling-related amendments offered as a revenue-producing measure amid the state’s ongoing budget bills.  The problem, however, is that Payne’s pro-gambling language appeared in two different proposals served up by competing pro-gambling interests, and by the time the confusion was sorted out, both amendments went down to defeat.

In politics, however, no defeat is ever permanent, and both of the amendments will be given formal reconsideration as Pennsylvania’s legislature tries to put together a new budget.  This time around, it’s larger a Republican bloc pushing the pro-gambling measures forward, viewing the various proposals as one way to close the projected deficit that the state’s governor, Tom Wolf, initially offered.  Since the GOP in the state remains firm on its “no new taxes” pledge, the state’s leaders either have to cut spending or derive new revenue streams.

Online gambling revenue, per several of the state’s GOP leaders, is high on the list of possibilities.

However, getting the state’s various business interests together remains the primary hurdle.  Payne’s online-gambling package centered on extending the licensing deals currently in place with the state’s licensed casinos, granting them the right to offer their services online.  As a way of sweetening the pot and building a partial coalition, the latest amendment featuring Payne’s pro online-gambling also allows for a limited expansion of “brick and mortar” slots, at airports and in the state’s handful of pari-mutuel facilities.

Opposing that faction to date has been a powerful lobbying effort led by the state’s tavern industry, which instead seeks the legalization of video slots in bars across the state.  Such video slots, more formally known as video gaming terminals (VGTs) are found in bars in numerous other states, but not in Pennsylvania.  Their proponents claim the machines are necessary to stay competitive with the casino industry, which generally also serves alcohol in addition to the gambling on offer.

In last week’s voting debacle, the two separate amendments were offered.  Both included the online-gambling expansion, but one of the amendments included the airport-‘n’-dogtrack slots provisions, while the other replaced those provisions with the VGT stuff.

Since those two groups couldn’t get together, and a third segment of Pennsylvania’s legislature is against any gambling expansion, it was a recipe for defeat.

Can the two pro-gambling factions come together and pass a budget amendment in June?  That’s the big question, and with it comes any prospect for Pennsylvanie becoming the fourth US state to legalize online gambling.  One complicating factor is that the VGT variant has less overall support in the Keystone State’s Senate, and may go down to defeat in that body regardless of whether it can be passed in a House.  Yet there is this sense of the House’s pro-VGT minority and its tavern-lobbied backers holding Payne’s online-gambling push hostage… at least until they get some concessions of their own.

Most of the state’s legislators seem to favor some form of expansion, but the if and when of it remains unclear.  “Our goal is for gaming revenues to be part of the final budget package,” House Majority Leader Dave Reed told the Philadelphia Inquirer. “We wanted to kind of test it out in May, but obviously when we come back in June it will be full guns a-blazing trying to get a budget done, and that will be part of that process.”

Online poker players remain hopeful.  Pennsylvania isn’t California, though its addition to the short role of online-legalized US states would help shatter the legislative inertia that currently exists across the country.  Overall, the odds in PA appear a little long, at least for 2016, but there’s always hope.