The Pennsylvania state Senate is planning to again address the problem of unregulated gaming in the state when it reconvenes in September, according to a report on the news site PlayPennsylvania.com.
The report says the planned legislation will target every form of gambling device not now regulated by the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board or the Pennsylvania lottery, state Senator John Yudichak told the site. Yudichak chairs the Community, Economic & Recreational Development committee, which oversees most gambling legislation.
The committee held a series of hearings on unregulated gaming machines last session but produced no bills before the session ended.
Last year, Senator Jake Corman, the former Republican majority leader and now president pro tempore of the state Senate, had proposed to widely legalize and tax all gambling devices known as “skill games” and add many more video gaming terminals (VGTs), but failed to gain support.
Corman said the plan for September is only to address “illegal” machines, particularly “games of skill,” according to PlayPennsylvania.
Corman said he wants the legislation to be “bipartisan and bi-cameral.”
Mike Barley, a spokesman for the Pennsylvania Skills machine distributor Pace-O-Matic told PlayPennsylvania in a statement that the company supports legalization of its games.
“While Pace-O-Matic and Pennsylvania Skill strongly support the regulation and additional taxation of skill games in the commonwealth, we are surprised to hear that legislation appears to be being drafted without any input from the skill game industry,” Barley said.
“Additionally, we are concerned that this is a back-door attempt to legalize VGTs under the guise of skill game regulation. There were a number of hearings in the summer on this issue, and we were not invited to participate. As this issue holds the livelihoods of thousands of small business owners as well as the financial solvency of many of our fraternal groups.”
