Up to five licences issued under Correa Cali bill
Senator Louis Correa's intrastate poker bill has been amended so that up to five licences may be issued, rather than the original single site, one licence proposal.
California Senator Louis Correa’s intrastate poker bill has been amended to issue up to five licences to operate websites to tribes or card rooms, instead of the originally proposed single site, one licence.
The amendments inserted late last week in the SB40 bill originally pushed by the Morongo Tribe-led California Online Poker Association (COPA) stipulate that three of the five licences to own and operate intrastate poker websites would be issued immediately. A further two licences could be issued within three years if the California Gambling Control Commission deemed that sufficient additional capacity existed.
A licence fee of 10% of stakes has also been introduced into the bill, to be paid on top of the one-off fee outlined in Correa’s original draft, which declared the state’s right to collect “licensing or administrative fees that the department may assess as reimbursement for the costs of implementing this chapter.”
With backing from COPA, the powerful California Nations Indian Gaming Association and the California Gaming Association (CGA), Correa’s bill has publicly received greater backing among the tribes and card rooms defined in the bill as potential stakeholders in Californian online poker than the SB 45 proposal introduced by Senator Rod Wright.