AUGUSTA – A bill that is key to Penn National Gaming Inc.’s plan to build a $75 million racetrack casino near Bangor Raceway began making its way through the Legislature on Tuesday.

The bill, LD 90, would give state gambling control officials the ability to keep confidential some of the personal and corporate information gathered during licensing background checks for Penn National and applicants for other racino licenses.

The Senate passed LD 90 unanimously and without debate in initial voting Tuesday morning, state Sen. Joseph Perry, the bill’s sponsor, said late Tuesday afternoon.

The House of Representatives did the same Tuesday night, state Rep. Patricia Blanchette, D-Bangor, said.

Final enactment, which will involve recorded votes, could occur as early as today, Perry and Blanchette said.

“Everyone is fully expecting it will be,” Perry said.

Blanchette, a member of the legislative committee that handled the bill, was eager to see the matter laid to rest.

“We just need to put this thing to bed,” Blanchette said. “This is something the people of Bangor voted for twice [in local and statewide slots referendums in 2003].

“It’s been a long, hard fight,” she said, adding that there were attempts to derail the bill along the way.

“The only ones who have a stake in this are the people of Bangor and Penn National,” she said, applauding the company for its willingness to “go above and beyond and try to be accommodating” to state gaming regulators and lawmakers.

If the bill wins the support of at least two-thirds of the Legislature, it will be enacted as emergency legislation, which would make it effective immediately upon the signature of Gov. John Baldacci.

If the bill doesn’t get the two-thirds, LD 90 would take effect later, by July 1 if enacted before the Legislature adjourns, Perry said.

LD 90 was submitted at the Maine Gambling Control Board’s request to resolve an oversight involving the state’s handling of personal and corporate information deemed confidential in other gambling states.

Penn National has been granted a conditional slots operator license, but without assurance that sensitive information will be protected in Maine, company executives have said they could not submit the rest of the information state gaming regulators need to complete the licensing process.

The original version of the confidentiality bill was sweeping, covering everything from trade secrets and business plans to the birth dates, Social Security numbers, home addresses and telephone numbers of key executives.

But it also would have covered some records already in the public domain, including criminal and civil litigation histories and information filed with the federal Securities and Exchange Commission.

That proved unpopular with media and anti-gambling organizations, who complained LD 90 went too far in extending confidentiality to such areas as criminal and civil litigation histories, and because some definitions of what would be protected were overly broad and vague.

The bill was streamlined during a series of work sessions. Its most controversial aspects were scrapped. Publicly available information will remain public.

Bangor officials have been monitoring the bill’s progress closely.

“The city’s been supportive of LD 90 as a way to move the [racino] project ahead,” City Manager Edward Barrett said Tuesday. “We’d certainly like to see this adopted.”

Though Penn National executives had hoped to break ground here by late spring or early summer, a spokesman said Tuesday that the company is taking a wait-and-see approach to how the bill is implemented.

LD 90 gives the board the ability to issue summary reports of decisions based on confidential information.

At issue for Penn National is how specific the reports will be, spokesman Eric Schippers said Tuesday in a telephone interview.

“For us it’s the policy that will develop around the law,” he said.