Rozner: Can Illinois get a sports betting bill right?

It's been more than a year now since New Jersey won in the Supreme Court.

It got the ruling all expected, that any state can add sports gambling, and in the 12 months since, eight states have included sportsbooks, obviously prepared for a decision everyone knew was coming.

Not surprisingly, Illinois is still not among them, continuing to argue over legislation and attempting to figure out how to best gouge the customer.

This is, after all, the Land of Taxes and Even Higher Taxes.

Six more states will be adding sports betting in the next few months, having already signed bills into law, while Illinois fiddles and fed-up taxpayers burn rubber in search of warmer climes and no state levies.

As usual, neighboring Iowa and Indiana are well ahead and on the verge of starting books, expected to be up and running for the NFL season and allowing for the essential mobile betting when they flip the switch.

Without mobile betting, it's pointless, and Illinois will undoubtedly make it difficult and expensive for operators to have physical sites and online wagering.

Naturally.

So where is Illinois? Fighting, of course, over whose pockets get filled and how the state will waste the money.

Lawmakers are talking about a 25 percent tax on wagers, just a tad higher than the 6.75 in Vegas and three times that of Iowa.

Color me shocked.

Then, there are the license fees to operate a book, which might cost Illinois operators in the tens of millions. Iowa sold them for $100,000.

Add it all up and the cost to the consumer could be enough to keep people using their old-fashioned book where they don't have to front cash, or stay offshore where the prices will be more attractive.

And, of course, that would defeat the purpose of finally bringing legal sports betting to the state, where it can be regulated, monitored and generate revenue.

The hypocrisy remains everywhere, professional sports leagues continuing to politic for "integrity fees," so ridiculous a notion that they've changed the name to what it really means, a "royalty fee."

Every other state has told the leagues - which fought to prevent sports gambling for decades - to go scratch, while Illinois seriously considers offering up a piece of the action.

How Illinois is that?

Then there's the matter of expanded casino gambling and trying to save the racetracks, something that should have been done two decades ago when there was still a terrific horse racing product in Illinois.

With apologies, that's closing the barn door after the horse has fled the state for locales that added slots to their facilities many moons ago.

Thanks, Pat Quinn, for twice vetoing bills that might have saved a billion-dollar horse racing industry in Illinois in favor of the casino lobby.

Still, Arlington Park remains the most beautiful and welcoming facility in the country, where a sportsbook and full casino would fit nicely.

The Local Oval has the physical plant, the space, the right people and has hosted regulated gambling since 1927.

There's simply no argument against it, unless you still believe Al Capone is going to terrorize Arlington Heights residents.

It might revive the track, might even bring back some horsemen who have left for higher purses and better racing at the tracks given slots by their states.

But as Illinois lawmakers rush to get something done before the current session ends May 31, they will try to include expanded casino gambling and race tracks in a sports betting bill, no doubt pushing something through that doesn't work for anyone.

That's if they get anything done.

No one would blame you for thinking they won't. And no one would blame you for thinking that if they do it will be wrong and have to be fixed down the road.

It is Illinois, the State Where Nothing Works.