LEBANON — The City Council is mulling whether to put a question before voters in March to allow keno games to be offered in the city.
Since 2017, state law has allowed keno — a self-serve betting game run by the New Hampshire lottery — in towns where it is approved in a local election.
In Lebanon, the City Council previously has considered Keno three times but each time decided not to ask voters whether it should be allowed in the city.
But now there is a deadline to act. A new law passed this summer will legalize the game across the state beginning in July 2027 if municipalities don’t opt out during a regularly scheduled election.
Voters in Concord, Keene and Portsmouth rejected allowing the games in city limits in November.
It seems like the “sensible approach” to allow voters to decide on whether to allow keno in Lebanon rather than the council, Mayor Doug Whittlesey said Tuesday.
On Wednesday, the City Council will discuss whether to put a keno question on the ballot during the March city election. The meeting is set to start at 7 p.m. in the Lebanon High School gym.
“Within the city we now have Revo Casino, so allowing keno operations would not represent a significant shift for Lebanon,” Whittlesey said.
Revo Casino and Social House opened on Miracle Mile last December, offering electronic slot machines, gaming tables and poker.
Previously, Revo, which first opened under different ownership in 2018, operated the much smaller Lebanon Poker Room at one end of the downtown pedestrian mall.
Elsewhere in the Upper Valley, voters in Claremont, Newport and Enfield approved keno in 2018.
In communities where it’s allowed, keno offers gambling in varied locations. Players select between one and 12 numbers out of 80 and wager a minimum of $1. A random number generator draws winning numbers every five minutes.
Businesses with liquor licenses are eligible to have keno machines and to keep 8% of proceeds from games. The remaining profits, excluding “administrative costs of the lottery commission and prize payouts” are placed in New Hampshire’s education trust fund.
This is usually about 29% of revenue, according to an analysis from the New Hampshire Fiscal Policy Institute.
When keno was introduced to New Hampshire in 2017, the proceeds were slated to fund full-day kindergarten which many municipalities saw as the main benefit, the Valley News reported at the time. As of 2019, the proceeds go into the general education trust fund that is used to support public education and fund scholarship programs.
In 2018, 2019 and 2020, the Lebanon City Council discussed keno and opted not to put the item before voters, citing concerns about introducing gambling to vulnerable populations. Councilors who supported the move said that the voters should decide, not the council.
After the third vote, Deputy City Manager David Brooks recalled that the council made a decision not to take up the issue again. But now, the state has “flipped the script” with the new legislation, Brooks said.
The law change is indicative of a broader trend of “eroding local control,” Whittlesey said Tuesday. The state Legislature “continues to move away from our longstanding model of local control as the default option” in new laws, he said.
Whittlesey pointed to a series of laws passed this year that create statewide planning and zoning regulations in an attempt to incentivize housing development as another example.