State Sen. Chris Elliott (R-Josephine) has blamed the gambling industry's “greed” for the state Legislature's failure to pass gambling and lottery bills this session.

After the Alabama House and Senate passed completely different bills on the issue, a conference committee was formed, but the agreement was also rejected by the Senate by a vote of 20 to 15. The proposed amendment to the Alabama Constitution required a three-fifths majority in both houses, so 21 votes were needed to pass.

Elliott discussed the issue on WVNN's “Right Side Radio” on Monday.

“[T]”The Senate was too greedy,” Elliott said. “When the Senate passed the gambling bill, it was a bill that was going to pass the Senate. I explained it directly to my House colleagues: 'Listen, this is it. This is the only way it's going to work. If you change it substantially, it's going to fail.' So we knew seven weeks ago that this was going to fail. It was going to fail from the moment the House decided to meet in conference.”

The senator argued that this is a missed opportunity for those who support expanding gambling in the state.

“I'm not a big fan of gambling. I didn't like the bill that the Senate passed, but I thought there were good parts to it. It wasn't all bad,” he said. “There's a lot of bad parts in there, but it's not all bad. And the good parts of that bill, the restrictive parts, got thrown out with the rest of it. And I think that was a mistake on their part. They got lucky and they missed out on it. They got greedy, they wanted more money, they wanted more types of games, and it should have passed the Senate.”

Gov. Kay Ivey recently said she has no plans to call a special session to pass anything.

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“Why would I do that?” Ivey said. “They can't come to an agreement at this point, so why would I spend the time and effort and money on a special session? So I'm disappointed that the gambling bill doesn't represent the will of the people.”

Elliott agreed with Ivey's assessment.

“Absolutely not,” he said when asked if a special session would be called. “I mean, I think the governor was right a few days ago when he said there's no point in calling a special session if the votes aren't there.”

“I think it will be difficult to get a quorum for a special session right now,” he added. “People are exhausted, nerves are frayed. I think lawmakers are mad because they've been pushed into this situation in some cases. There's no way this will work out in a special session, and it will end up being a failed special session where we can't pass a gambling bill. And who wants to call a special session just to deal with gambling in the first place? It's a bad plan.”

Elliott also believes gambling will likely remain less acceptable in the future.

“I saw through this session that the senators who voted for the original bill are never going to vote for gambling again because they saw how sneaky and mean people had become. When gambling got greedy and started pitting people against each other and people against each other, they thought, 'Wow, this is what gambling is like. Maybe we don't need this.'”

Yaffe is a contributing writer for Yellow Hammer News and hosts “The Yaffe Program” weekdays from 9-11 a.m. WhistlerYou can follow us on Twitter @Yaffe