Aldermen in Batavia, Illinois recently voted 8-3 to lift the city’s ban on video gambling. As a result, local taverns, social clubs, restaurants and entertainment venues may install up to five video gambling machines. The municipality may charge a licensing fee for each one, plus receive 5 percent of the revenue.
Aldermen said local business owners asked them to lift the video gambling ban. They said they needed the machines to compete with businesses in nearby communities that did not ban the games.
City Administrator Laura Newman said if 12 businesses in the community each install five video gambling machines, Batavia could receive an additional $120,000 annually, plus a yearly fee of $25 per machine. After payouts, video gaming revenue is taxed at a flat rate of 30 percent; five-sixths goes to the state and one-sixth goes to the local government. The remaining 70 percent goes to the video terminal operators and the establishments.
Mayor Jeff Schielke was opposed to video gambling and said he would not vote for lifting the ban.
Batavia and Geneva were the last holdouts against video gambling in Kane County; Geneva still has a video-gambling ban. Cook, Lake and Winnebago counties and the cities of Decatur, Rockford, and Springfield have the most video gambling terminals, according to a report by the Illinois Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability, as reported by the Chicago Tribune.
