{"id":577474,"date":"2010-05-24T19:32:12","date_gmt":"2010-05-24T23:32:12","guid":{"rendered":"tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d8341c60fd53ef01348199156b970c"},"modified":"2010-05-24T19:32:12","modified_gmt":"2010-05-24T23:32:12","slug":"regulators-wince-as-video-gambling-bill-advances","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/577474","title":{"rendered":"Regulators wince as video gambling bill advances"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Posted by David Kidwell and Ray Long<\/em> at 6:31 p.m.<\/p>\n<p>A video gambling bill strongly opposed by state regulators advanced in a House committee today and now awaits a vote that could send it to the governor.<\/p>\n<p>The state&#8217;s top gambling regulator predicted House lawmakers would pass the legislation, which he said would give amnesty to operators who have illegally operated video poker machines in bars for years.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s a disaster,\u201d said Aaron Jaffe, chairman of the Illinois Gaming Board. \u201cI have no idea all the power plays that are going on down there (Springfield) right now, but I can tell you that they are all listening to the wrong people.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>House Bill 4927, which passed quietly through the Senate earlier this month, would require a felony conviction on gambling charges before the gaming board could deny a license to operate video gambling machines in Illinois. Until last year gambling for money on the machines was illegal, but critics say few people were ever convicted of felony gambling charges for operating them.<\/p>\n<p>Jaffe\u2019s board adopted a new rule in January to require applicants to attest under oath that they never operated such a machine illegally in the past. The measure\u2019s House sponsor said today Jaffe\u2019s rule goes too far.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s not the Gaming Board\u2019s province to go back in time and find out who those people are, especially the way they drafted the rule. So because the rule was vague,\u201d said state. Rep Lou Lang, D-Skokie, \u201cwe decided there needed to be some definition in the rule. Otherwise, who would go out and invest in these machines.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The House Executive Committee voted 9-2 to send the bill to the full House.<\/p>\n<p>The bill is being shepherded by the same lobbyists for the Illinois Coin Machine Operators Association who last year persuaded lawmakers to legalize the machines. Among them is Joe Berrios, who is the chairman of the Cook County Democratic Party and a candidate to become Cook County assessor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Posted by David Kidwell and Ray Long at 6:31 p.m. A video gambling bill strongly opposed by state regulators advanced in a House committee today and now awaits a vote that could send it to the governor. The state&#8217;s top gambling regulator predicted House lawmakers would pass the legislation, which he said would give amnesty [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3992,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-577474","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/577474","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3992"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=577474"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/577474\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=577474"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=577474"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=577474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}