As Pennsylvania lawmakers continue to struggle to fund a billion budget for the fiscal year that began in July, a package of legislation in Pennsylvania that would expand gaming with online gaming, satellite casinos and airport tablet gaming is stalled because of a single issue—video gaming in bars and taverns, according to a lobbyist fighting to legalize video gaming terminals, or VGTs, in bars and tavern across the state.
Richard Teitelbaum, president of the Pennsylvania Video Gaming Association, said in an interview with the Bucks County Courier Times that VGTs represent millions in new revenue tax waiting to be collected by the state. “Every legislator knows video gaming terminals in bars and taverns is the answer to the budget deficit,” Teitelbaum said. “This would be a new source of revenue, and it would help taxpayers because there would be no reason to raise taxes.”
The House bill that was passed and then rejected by the state Senate, HB 271, would legalize from five to 10 terminals in each liquor-licensed establishment, with revenue taxed at 37.5 percent plus a 4 percent local-share assessment. Teitelbaum argued that the machines would simply replace illegal terminals already in place, from which the state receives nothing. He added that the additional revenues would prop up many bar owners who are struggling from recent state laws, prominent among them the law authorizing sale of six packs of beer in convenience stores.
The state Senate, though, is not likely to be persuaded by the arguments, with leading Republicans including Senator Robert (Tommy) Tomlinson maintaining that VGTs would cannibalize revenues from the state’s current land-based casinos. “There’s only so many gaming dollars out there, and someone will skip going to the casino if they can just go down the street to the local bar and gamble,” Tomlinson told the Courier Times. “They are taxed much lower than the casinos’ slot machine revenue. That’s unfair to the casinos that have invested billions of dollars to establish themselves.”
The House passed a budget plan last week that relies mainly on borrowing against future state tobacco settlement to close the deficit. However, according to the Penn Live website, the plan includes “a yet-to-be-determined expansion of legal gambling.” The budget plan projects $200 million from expanded gambling, with details to be worked out.
