A Kansas Senate committee’s chairman says the panel will sponsor a bill designed to attract a casino to southeast Kansas and bring slot machines to dog and horse tracks.

Chairman Pete Brungardt, a Salina Republican, scheduled Thursday’s meeting of the Senate Federal and State Affairs to launch a push for the gambling legislation. He expects his committee to vote to sponsor the bill.

A 2007 state law allows slots at now-closed tracks in Kansas City, Wichita and outside Pittsburg, as well as a state-owned casino in southeast Kansas.

Gambling supporters say the law’s financial requirements are too strict for a southeast Kansas casino or slots at the tracks to be economically feasible. The committee’s bill would change the requirements.

But such efforts have found little support in the past.