State Sen. Garlan Gudger, R-Culman, a member of the Alabama House-Senate Conference Committee on Legal Gambling in 2024, denied the contents of a series of text messages that were circulated throughout his district over the weekend.

In an Instagram video to her 22,700 followers, Rep. Goodger (R-Cullman) said she wanted to “set the record straight” after a post went viral accusing her and proponents of “expanding government” and ultimately expanding gambling in the state.

Governor Gujjar voted in favor of the plan when it passed the House and was presented to the Senate. In a video, he explained his reasons for voting and walked voters through his decision-making process. Below is the full video and transcript.

State Senator Garlan Guger:

“Hello everyone, this is Senator Garlan Gujjar. I wanted to speak to you on Facebook today about a chain email that has been flooding my phone. I'm at work, but I want to take a few minutes to explain my side of the story and set the record straight, because a lot of people have been emailing me about this chain email.

First of all, I don't know who sent this email. If I do anything important, my name will be behind it. If I believe this email, no one knows who sent it. So, first of all, they are hiding their identity. Secondly, this email says that I will vote for the gambling bill that was passed in Montgomery and expand the government.

So let's get to it. Let me just give you the facts. First, this is a lottery bill. Personally, I voted for it so that people have the right to vote to choose whether or not they want a lottery.

Or if you don't want a lottery, the only thing we can spend that money on is an education lottery. So I think you're smart enough to know if you want that. I don't need to be a dictator in Montgomery and tell you what we're going to do. I want the voting rights back in the hands of the people now. I will do that whenever I can.

The second issue is sports betting. A lot of people have told me they're worried about sports betting. College kids and high school kids betting on sports, betting $5, $10, $100 at a time, and then at the end of the month their parents' credit card shows up with a $20,000 bill. I don't want to see that happen in Alabama.

And the people who are using this now, or who are using offshore accounts in the Cayman Islands or New York or wherever else. There just hasn't been enough time, education or data to make a clear decision on how to deal with this. I think it's going to come back. And when it does, we're going to dig into it.

But I didn't have time to really look into that information in order to vote on this bill, so I removed that piece from the bill. The third thing is casinos. This bill says it incorporates casinos. But there are over 60 bingo parlors in Alabama right now, and that doesn't include illegal gambling that goes on in every county in Alabama, 67 counties.

We went from over 60 bingo parlors down to seven, meaning we reduced the number of bingo parlors that we had in the state of Alabama. And why did we even keep the bingo parlors in the bill in the first place? Because the bingo parlor representatives and senators said, “This is economic development” in this particular county. Bingo parlors create jobs, they bring in paychecks, they allow people to go out and buy groceries, milk, diapers for their kids.

The reality is not in our county. [Cullman] That's not the case in North Alabama. So I listened to my colleagues in the Legislature and we wanted to leave it to them. So they had seven of the biggest bingo parlors at the time. We ended up allowing seven bingo parlors out of 60, reducing their size and putting a net around them that we taxed them so that all Alabamians benefited.

We got rid of sports betting, which was a concern for everyone, and thirdly, we gave the educational lottery back to the people, so they could vote for it or not. It doesn't matter how you voted, you have a choice to vote, not people like me in Montgomery.

Ultimately, this chain document says we are expanding government. The reason it says that is because we are, for the first time in the history of the state of Alabama, putting an enforcement agency under the Gambling Commission to govern all gambling in the state of Alabama. So the real purpose of this “expanding government” is enforcement against the bad guys and the bad actors who are doing bad things in Alabama, and they should be accountable to one agency, not two or three different agencies.

“I believe in this bill. I voted for it. I will vote for it again because I believe it's the right thing for Alabama to generate revenue so we can address illegal gambling, which is spreading so rapidly in our state, and to reduce our bingo power from 16 to seven. I believe it's the right thing for our state.”

The approval by the House-Senate Joint Committee marks the most progress Alabama lawmakers have made in putting the issue of legalizing gambling to Alabama voters since 1999, but the two bills have stalled in the Senate.

When lawmakers recess on Tuesday, there will be just two days left in the 2024 state legislative session.

Austin Shipley is a staff writer for Yellow Hammer News.