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House votes to ban game
Anti-sweepstakes bill goes to Perdue; legislators say gambling fight will continue
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HOW THEY VOTED:Here's how the members of the Forsyth County delegation to the N.C. House voted on the bill to ban video sweepstakes machines. A "yes" vote was to pass the ban:
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Published: July 8, 2010
RALEIGH
The N.C. House voted to ban Internet sweepstakes games yesterday, continuing a long-standing effort to stamp out video gambling in the state.
Debate on the issue lasted more than two hours and pitted Democrats against their own leadership in the House. Some felt that the bill was being rammed through the General Assembly, though proponents said it merely closed loopholes in existing video-poker bans that have been weakened by the courts.
Some legislators called for more study on the issue, or for a longer phase-out for the games, which often pair gambling with the purchase of phone or computer minutes. Some said the ban would cost the state thousands of jobs, or pointed out that the state runs its own gambling operation -- the lottery.
But, in the end, the vote wasn't close. The House approved the ban 86-27.
The Senate had already approved the bill, which would make sweepstakes cafes illegal starting Dec. 1. It now heads to Gov. Bev Perdue, who is expected to sign it.
Reps. Earline Parmon and Larry Womble, both Democrats from Forsyth County, were in the thick of the debate, and both voted against the ban. Womble called it "hypocritical in so many ways" and said it was a creeping example of government regulation over free will. He called on his party's leadership to hold off on the vote until the next legislative session gears up early next year, or to at least set aside a few more days for negotiation as this session wanes.
Parmon said she worried for a woman who'd taken out a loan to finance set-up for her Internet parlor and "now she's looking at being in debt." She noted that Winston-Salem, which recently implemented a tax on these games, stands to lose hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue because of the ban.
"We voted to put people out of jobs," Parmon said after the vote. She, and others, said that a lot of pressure was put on legislators who were told that if they didn't vote for the ban "it would hurt them in the elections."
The Winston-Salem City Council voted in May to require business centers to pay a flat privilege-license fee of $2,500 and a fee of $500 for each sweepstakes machine they operate. That could have brought in about $588,500 in revenue toward the city's 2010-11 budget.
Mayor Allen Joines could not be reached for comment last night.
Several legislators said they had qualms about legislating morality through the bill. But state Rep. Bill McGee, R-Forsyth, said he voted to ban the games because they have "very adversely affected" society. He said one woman contacted him and said she was addicted to the games. In eight months she lost everything she had and couldn't afford to feed herself or her dog, McGee said.
Brad Crone, a consultant for The Entertainment Group of N.C., a trade association for sweepstakes cafe owners and similar electronic games, said that the group was disappointed in the House's vote. "We continue to believe that regulating and taxing video gaming is the best public policy for the State of North Carolina," he said. "We will look at all options available to us including our legal avenues and the advances of technology as we follow the implementation of this law allowing the industry to continue to do business."
The issue was heavily lobbied this year, and some observers have said that the ban won't end electronic gambling, it will just force the industry to adapt. That's what it's been doing for years now as North Carolina -- like many states -- has banned various forms of electronic gaming.
State Rep. Ray Rapp, D-Haywood and a major proponent of the ban, compared the process to a game of Whack-A-Mole: You bash one game down and another pops up.
Even Joe Hackney, the speaker of the House, didn't have much confidence that this latest ban would stamp out electronic gambling. Asked after the vote if he thought this would be the last time legislators would deal with the issue, the speaker replied "Lord, no."
"It's just the latest chapter," he said.
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