Senate leader Phil Berger took a step back from pushing to usher more casinos into North Carolina on Wednesday, saying that he was not “intent on moving anything in particular” related to casinos during the state’s short legislative session that starts in April.
During last year’s legislative long session, whether additional casinos should be legalized in the state was one of the primary causes of a standoff between the legislative chambers over the months-delayed $30 billion state budget, which was supposed to be passed by July 1 but instead passed into law in early October.
Berger was a strong advocate for legalizing more casinos, and as the Republican-controlled Senate’s top leader, he made various moves to achieve this, including setting a stake in the ground that casino legalization and the authorization of thousands of video lottery terminals must be included in the state budget.
