A public meeting of the Pennsylvania House Gaming Oversight Committee held at the Mount Airy Casino Resort in Mt. Pocono provided casino officials a forum in which to give the regulators suggestions for regulatory changes that would improve the revenues of the industry.
Members of the Gaming Oversight panel, which currently is considering several bills to legalize online gaming in the state, were given suggestions for several changes they said will improve efficiency and get more people to the casinos. First and foremost, they said, was the sluggish approval period of the state’s gaming lab in getting new slot machines to the floor.
Casino officials complained that customers were asking for slot machines that are already approved in Nevada and New Jersey but are tied up in the lab, where approvals are known to take a year or more. “The hottest games in the country are being rejected here,” Mount Airy Slot Director Richard Whitby told the lawmakers, according to the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Citizens Voice. “This ties our hands in giving people the games they want.”
Whitby presented statistics showing slot-maker Aristocrat Technologies got 112 games approved in New Jersey last year, to just 22 in Pennsylvania. “We’d like to know why this is,” said Rep. John Payne, the committee’s chairman. “Our job it to make sure we are competitive.” Unlike many states around the country, Pennsylvania does not accept certification by Gaming Laboratories International in lieu of approval by its state-run lab.
Among other suggestions from the casino that officials said will improve business:
• Allow bingo at casinos.
• Allow casino employees to gamble at the casinos where they work on off hours.
• Provide house-friendly blackjack rules, such as allowing the dealer to hit on soft 17, and allowing players to play three hands at once.
• Create a watch list of problem gamblers for security staff to reference and review.
• Eliminate the cap on check-cashing that currently limits customers to cashing no more than $2,500 in personal checks per day.
• Approve sports betting.
