Gambling legislation could also find a friendlier audience in the state Senate this year. “Let’s regulate it, tax it, and put the money in Hope and pre-K.” “We walk away from $100 million every year in sports gambling, and other states, and places like Antigua, get that money from people here in Georgia,” Stephens said. He said he has never been more confident the Legislature will vote in the session that begins in January to have a constitutional amendment on the ballot in 2024. Stephens said it is about time that gambling that is allowed in the state - the lottery - is expanded to include sports gambling, with additional measures to allow horse racing and casinos. They would have been booted out of office with both feet.”

“If anyone did sign it, it would have been their political death wish. “Not a single person came up,” said Stephens, who is the chairman of the House Economic Development and Tourism Committee. His bill, Stephens said, would have instantly meant the end of the Hope Scholarship.

He asked members to come up and sign the bill. During a 2021 hearing on legalized sports gambling, he walked to the well of the house and said he was filing a bill to outlaw all gambling in the state. Ron Stephens, a Savannah Republican, wanted to make a point about gambling in the state of Georgia.

Online gambling should be legal