By JIM BARON

PROVIDENCE — Lincoln’s Twin River may want to change its theme song from Al Green’s “Take Me to the River” to Lionel Richie’s “All Night Long,” at least on weekends and holidays.

Both the House and Senate on Tuesday, working with unusual speed and inter-chamber cooperation, overrode Gov. Donald Carcieri’s veto and passed into law a bill allowing Twin River and its sister slot parlor, Newport Grand, to stay open 24 hours on weekends and holidays.
The measure passed both chambers with well over the three-fifths support it needed to survive the veto. In the House, the vote was 51-16; the Senate gave it a 24-8 margin. Carcieri vetoed the bill, sponsored by Pawtucket Rep. William San Bento, on Monday.
The House made the override its first order of business Tuesday, and after the limited debate mandated by chamber rules, passed it and sent it across the Rotunda to the Senate, which had finished its business for the day, but waited in recess to override the veto and make the bill law.
Both facilities say they can be ready to operate around the clock within about six weeks.
“This runs contrary to every theory of government,” declared Minority Whip Nicholas Gorham in defending Carcieri’s veto. “How can we regulate that which we rely on for so much revenue?
“No matter how you slice it,” Gorham told his colleagues, “by increasing the number of hours the casino operates in Rhode Island, under the theory that it will produce more revenue, all we are doing is ensuring evermore that we rely on gambling — a vice according to anyone you ask — to run our state.”
Majority Whip Peter Kilmartin noted that Carcieri said in recent days that he wanted the host communities to have a say in the extended hours and that he doesn’t want to, in Kilmartin’s words, “ram anything down their throat.” The Pawtucket lawmaker then said of the governor, “You can’t have it both ways.
“Last week,” Kilmartin asserted, “on the governor’s initiative, we rammed a $12 million cut in local aid down every community’s throat.”
Pointing out that the governor supported the largest expansion of gambling in the state’s history when he engineered the purchase of the then-Lincoln Park from its current owners without approval of Lincoln or Newport, Kilmartin said the Carcieri administration “has had more flip-flops than Scarborough Beach.”
Kilmartin said the legislature accommodated the desires of the local communities by reducing proposed expansion from 24 hours, seven days a week, to the so-called “24/3” where it will stay open only on weekends and holidays.
He also noted a sunset clause, which builds in a review process by mandating that the law expire after one year unless the Assembly approves it again; Kilmartin also cited an increased share of revenue going to Lincoln and Newport. (Lincoln is slated to get an estimated additional $1.1 million from the additional hours.)
Majority Leader Gordon Fox called the estimated $14 million additional revenue that the state will realize from the extra gambling hours “a piece of the puzzle” in addressing seemingly bottomless budget deficits.
“If you really care about mitigating against raising taxes, if you care about supporting our revenue base, trying to support the Department of Revenue and looking at the total picture, that’s why you need to support the override.
“This is in the state’s interest,” Fox said. “We have to balance between the state’s interest and the local interests.”
Republican Leader Robert Watson dismissed as “a myth” the notion that the bill would bring in additional revenue that would aid all communities. “We all know that to be a lie. It won’t put additional money or more money” into aid for local school districts, he said.
Watson asserted that the only communities that will benefit financially from the measure are Lincoln and Newport, and he noted that representatives of those communities voted in opposition because their constituents do not want the facilities open longer.
On the Senate side, Rep. Paul Moura of East Providence called the veto “very weak and very hypocritical.
“The governor continues to talk about cooperation, but as it has remained throughout his career as governor, it continues to be cooperation when it is convenient. We just passed over 90 percent of his proposed supplemental budget. I think that was cooperation. We do need to cooperate and we do need to work together. It can’t be lip service. Actions speak louder than words.”
Carcieri spokesman Jeff Neal said the governor “stands by the objections he raised yesterday” in his veto message, “(but) he recognizes that it is the right of the General Assembly to override his veto.”
An identical bill sponsored by Moura and passed by the Senate is still awaiting action in the House. It was not known Tuesday whether that bill would go forward now that San Bento’s version has become law.
Neal said if that bill is also passed and sent to the governor, “I expect Gov. Carcieri would veto any similar legislation.”