Photo by Images_of_Money

If you really feel like gambling, you don’t have to drive far—you can head to West Virginia or Maryland, and if a November ballot initiative passes, a Las Vegas-style casino will appear only miles from the D.C. line at the National Harbor. That prospect has some D.C. legislators concerned, and they want to debate if anything should be done about it.

Yesterday Councilmembers Marion Barry (D-Ward 8) and Jack Evans (D-Ward 2) introduced legislation that would create a commission to study whether or not to legalize gambling in the city. In comments at the D.C. Council’s monthly legislative session, Barry said he wanted to consider the idea given the number of people who leave D.C. for table games, slots and other games of chance.

Legalized gambling is something of an arms race between the states, as the New York Times reported in August. Early adopters like Delaware have seen falling revenues as gambling options have increased in Maryland and Pennsylvania, while jurisdictions like D.C. have remained behind the curve in the lucrative industry. That’s not to say that D.C. hasn’t long debated the idea—a special council committee discussed it as far back as 1973, and in 1979 the council passed a resolution calling for a referendum on legalizing various games of chance. In 1982, the D.C. Lottery was created.

Still, the times that D.C. has tried to legalize some forms of gambling, controversy has followed. In 1996, a group seeking riverboat gambling on the Potomac failed to get the necessary signatures to get on the ballot. When another group tried to legalize slot machines via a ballot initiative in 2004, they were tossed off the ballot after the D.C. Board of Elections found extensive violations of signature-gathering rules. Earlier this year, a plan for legalized online gambling sank after its main proponents were accused of surreptitiously sneaking it into an unrelated spending bill.

Barry said he recognized the controversy that would follow even proposing the idea, but didn’t seem concerned with it. “It’s gonna be controversial, but that doesn’t mean anything to me,” he said. Barry and Evans said that if gambling were ever to be legalized in D.C., the proceeds would be dedicated to education.