The state Senate approved a host of tax breaks and deferrals – albeit scaled back from what they originally proposed – aimed at propping up the casino industry, which has been decimated by the COVID-19 pandemic and economic recession.

Senate Bill 2400 lowers the amount of revenue tax casinos have to pay for one year from the date they are allowed to reopen. It also eliminates hotel room fees through the end of 2020 and defers the $500 annual licensing fees from July 1 to June 30, 2021.

The bill permanently expands the promotional gaming credits and coupons that casinos could claim against their gross revenue, bringing it up to 100 percent.

And it reduces the taxes that casinos owe, based on a sliding scale, depending on how steep a drop they’ve seen in revenue because of the pandemic. The bill includes $100 million of the state’s federal CARES Act funding for small business grant and loan programs operated by the New Economic Development Authority.

New Jersey’s nine casinos have shuttered brick and mortar locations since March 16, under an order by Gov. Phil Murphy, and most revenue has all but evaporated by triple digit percentages.

Murphy said he would like to see casinos reopened by the July 4 weekend, even if at reduced capacity.

Online and mobile gambling and sports betting have provided an untenable lifeline for the state’s industry , which was previously hard hit by the Great Recession and pushed to the brink of extinction in the years that followed. But the current economic recession appears to be of worse magnitude with the state seeing record-high unemployment—upward of 26,000 casino employees have been out of work for months.

“The goal of this bill is strictly to get this industry up and running faster so they can start supporting our programs,” one of the bill’s sponsors, Senate President Stephen Sweeney, D-3rd District, said at a remotely held Senate voting session on Monday. “Right now they’re not generating much of anything.”

Amendments passed on Monday would keep casinos on the hook for hotel and parking fees.

The bill, should it pass, means that the state’s Casino Reinvestment Development Authority (CDRA), which receives many of the fees from casinos and funnels them towards social services, could lose up to $66.2 million, according to an analysis by the non-partisan Office of Legislative Services.

That was under the prior version of the legislation, but the amount that senior, disability, food aid, transportation and medical programs could lose would still be in the tens of millions. Some of the tax breaks would now only last one year, rather than two.

At the Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee hearing on June 11, Sussex County Health and Human Services Administrator Carol Novrit cautioned that the legislation “does really have some unintended consequences” such as on “rural transportation.”

“Without that we cannot get them to life-saving dialysis. We can’t get them to their chemotherapy appointments. We can’t get them to the food stores so they have something to eat,” she said.

Under the Monday amendments, the CRDA’s Casino Revenue Fund, where the gaming tax money is deposited, would have to keep the funding at the 2019 levels.

“It’s a reduction in how much they’re going to contribute. But the fact is it’s going to be a reduction anyway because the casinos aren’t going to operate at full capacity,” the Senate President added. “If the casinos don’t get moving, these programs don’t get funded.”

The bill was the topic of contentious debate on Monday, especially between Sweeney and an oft-time political foe of his in the upper house, Sen. Dick Codey, D-27th District, a former governor, who’s often allied himself with Murphy.

“The state is as poor as it gets right now, it could never, ever been worse,” Codey said. “We’re going to take a small portion … and give them these tax breaks while all our employers through the state are suffering and closing their doors.

“We want to take care of those 20,000 employees, but at the same time we want to take care of the four million employees employed throughout the state.”

It did get the approval of Sen. Mike Testa, R-1st District, whose district lies just to the south of Atlantic City.

“We need casinos to be dealt with separately because for 30 years, the state of New Jersey has layered special tax upon special tax on this industry,” Testa said. “We’ve treated the casino industry sort of like the golden goose that was going to continue to lay the golden egg forever.”