PA Looks To Preserve Online Poker RightLawmaker Eyes Resolution To Protect Its Rights As A State |
|
Pennsylvania saw an online poker bill introduced this week, but it comes while there’s a federal bill on the table that would ban online gaming nationwide. It’s a strange situation.
Pennsylvania lawmaker John Payne told Card Player on Thursday that he anticipates a proposal to accompany his online poker bill that would essentially aim to preserve the Keystone State’s right under the U.S. Constitution to enact an online poker law and have an online poker industry.
While the resolution would be “good for other issues,” such as the second amendment, Rep. Payne said that it will be considered because of the complex online gaming issue.
“I don’t think it’s their authority” to control online gaming, Payne said of the federal government. Many within the gaming industry agree with this pro-states’ rights logic, though many admit that a pro-online poker bill at the federal level would be ideal for the industry at large.
According to Payne, this will be the only time in his more than decade-long tenure in state office that Pennsylvania will be considering a proposal to keep its constitutional rights. The federal bill up for consideration aims to “restore” the 1961 Wire Act to apply to all forms of online gaming. It’s seen as an anti-states’ rights bill, despite being backed by numerous Republicans on Capitol Hill who allegedly support states’ rights. It’s quite the contradiction.
As for the likelihood of online poker being legalized in Pennsylvania this year, Payne said there is “no guarantee,” but that gaming officials didn’t tell him not to try it.
The man behind the federal efforts to ban online poker actually isn’t a lawmaker, but rather a super rich casino owner. The billionaire owner of Las Vegas Sands Corp., the largest casino developer in the world in terms of revenue, wants to put the genie back in the bottle.
Sands has a casino in Pennsylvania, which could make discussions for online poker in Pennsylvania a bit tricky. However, Payne stressed that Sands has just one casino in the state, while there are 12 in total. Payne said that no other casino in Pennsylvania opposes online gaming. All are in support of it, or have said they want to wait and see what the bill will be like.
There has been an enormous amount of speculation as to whether the Adelson-backed federal bill will have any chance in 2015. At the the annual Conservative Political Action Conference held Thursday, Adelson’s camp failed to show up to discuss online gaming, according to the Poker Players Alliance, a pro-online poker lobbying group in Washington.
“The fact that the primary RAWA supporters refused to join this debate, after significant effort by the organizers, tells me that they want their bill rubberstamped instead of openly debated on the merits—a basic tenet of democracy,” PPA Executive Director John Pappas said in a statement.
Copyright © 2001-2024
CardPlayer.com. All rights reserved.
