One of Wyoming’s most influential lawmakers, Ogden Driskill, vice president of the state senate, has repeated his call for a gaming commission to end the Wild West nature of gaming in the sparsely populated state, where freedom and very few regulations are bywords.
Last week, in an opinion piece published in the Casper Star Tribune, Driskill noted that during his nine years in the chamber, he has been involved with various efforts to regulate gaming, which, he wrote, is treated differently in different counties and jurisdictions. It’s led to a situation where an activity that is tolerated in one locale could be a felony in another.
It’s urgent, he argued, because of the proliferation of electronic gaming. He wrote: “With the advent of electronics, these new games found a loophole in the existing gaming laws. Sports betting is now on the horizon. These industries are handling an astonishing amount of revenue — over an estimated $1 billion annually.
“Gaming in Wyoming is no longer limited to small wagering backyard games; large-scale gambling operations are the new norm. Individual bingo parlors throughout the state are making millions a year, ‘skill,’ ‘gray’ and ‘black games’ are taking in even more — all without any oversight or supervision.”
It’s not that Wyoming hasn’t had gaming regulations. It has been heavily regulated since 1868, when Wyoming was still a territory. At one time, it was even outlawed and then the state relented for bingo and pull tabs. However, high tech has overtaken existing law, Driskill argues.
“Regulation of these growing industries is necessary to regulate what the people of Wyoming want for their individual communities and the state,” he wrote.
Even regulated gaming activities are not enforced because there’s no authority to enforce them, he says, or oversight to make sure that bingo halls that say their proceeds go to charity actually do that.
He points to a recent incident where a person wagering on a gaming machine won nearly $200,000 on a machine, only to be told that the machine had malfunctioned, and he would get nothing. This happened, wrote the lawmaker, because the state has no law that requires that gambling debts be paid.
Currently the legislature’s Travel, Recreation and Wildlife Committee is working on a bill that would regulate gaming and close the regulatory loopholes. It would legalize existing practice while making the law the same throughout the state. It would create a commission that the public could appeal to and, according to Driskill, it will “put the power to do so in the hands of citizens and their local governments.”
