California dreaming: America's most populous state considers legalising online poker
California's urgent need for cash to prop up state coffers after a projected US$25bn budget deficit presents online poker with its best chance of being legalized.
IF ANYTHING is going to get US politicians engaging with the toxic topic of legalising online gambling, it’s cash.
And nowhere in America more so than in California, where a range of emergency measures to fix the state’s projected US$25bn budget deficit was rejected by voters this month.
As reported on EGRmagazine.com, the failure to pass the measures could see America’s most populous state, which would be the world’s eighth largest economy if it were a country, go seriously into debt by the end of this financial year, providing a boost to a framework bill proposing licences for legal, taxed intrastate online poker to swell state coffers.
Jim Tabilio, president of grassroots gaming advocacy group Poker Voters of America (PVA), which sponsored a framework bill in 2008 which passed the state’s lower house, said: “The framework bill has a majority in support of the concept in both the Assembly and the Senate, and has a group of legislators including people in the leadership in both houses ready to take it forward.”
The bill was introduced by California Assemblyman Lloyd Levine last year, but dropped down the legislative agenda when the economic downturn diverted attention elsewhere and Levine left office at the end of his maximum second term.
Tabilio said he had been instructed by members of the California legislature to continue working on this bill in order for it to meet its goals of consumer protection and raising state revenue. He said the proposal would only allow the approximately 60 native Indian tribes with gaming compacts and 91 licensed land-based card clubs in the state to apply for licences remains in the framework bill.
“It’s a case of writing the bill so that it maximises revenue to the state and participating tribes and clubs. Once that is successful, it becomes a simple matter of having the vote because if everyone is in favour of it, it will pass. This means we’re probably going to be able to get the bill through in mid-summer,” he said.
Temporary regulation
Given the mounting financial pressure California finds itself under, Tabilio thinks the state government would then opt to file for temporary regulatory structures to push the initiatives through, so licence holders could be offering online poker to California residents from as early as January 2010.
If the pro- and anti-lobbies in Cali-fornia can find a way around their differences and the state can focus on the much-needed cash at hand, the bill might have a better than average chance of going through.
As California-based independent gaming lawyer Martin Owens says: “The state of California now can’t afford to ignore anything that might turn into a reasonable source of revenue, and here you have a multibillion dollar industry that is volunteering to be taxed.”
This article first appeared in the June edition of eGaming Review.