The bill's sponsor, state Rep. Chris Blackshear (R-Phoenix), was interviewed as the Alabama Senate took up the legal gaming bill passed by the House. yellow hammer news Some of the key aspects included in the proposal from start to finish:

YHN: How did U.S. Rep. Andy Witt (R-Harvest), Speaker Nathaniel Ledbetter (R-Rainsville), and other House members come together and overcome the failed bills of the past few years? Have you identified some of the obstacles?

Senator Blackshire: “Congressman Ledbetter asked Congressman Andy Whitt to lead a study group on gaming in Alabama during the 2023 session. We've known for a long time that there was a problem. Just recently. , the Senate passed an omnibus bill in 2021. Of course, we didn't do anything about it considering there were only two weeks left in the session, but we worked hard and made quite a bit of progress. Did.

However, as a new freshman class enrolled last year, the speakers promised that nothing would be done regarding the game and that they needed time to settle down and continue their education on the subject. I don't think anyone in the House was surprised that we took up the gaming bill this Congress.

We set up that committee, and we divided it into groups of seven or eight people, and one person looked into the lottery, and a few others were on that committee, and we looked at what other states were doing in terms of enforcement. I investigated whether it was done.

We meet weekly, and for the last six to eight weeks of last year's session, we had a big kickoff meeting the day after Sine Die.

At that kickoff meeting, we agreed to begin work on the legislation we want for the 2024 session.

We went to other states, met with lottery managers, learned how to run lotteries, and said, “Hey, we’re going to go to other states and meet with lottery managers and learn how they operate their lotteries. “If you came to Alabama and started over today knowing what we know now, how would you operate and organize the lottery?” Alabama Lottery?

We visited the company that prints over 70% of all lottery scratch-off tickets nationwide. We went to their warehouse, met with their security personnel, met with their executives, and asked them the same questions. “If you were to come to Alabama as a new lottery provider, how would you operate and structure the Alabama Lottery?”

And the biggest thing is, we got our feet wet and started walking around the state to see first-hand what the gaming environment in Alabama is like. We walked through a nutrition store with game machines in the back of the store, a clothing store with machines in the back of the store, and a flower shop with machines in the back of the store.

In total, we determined that there are hundreds of locations operating illegal gaming in the state. At that point, we knew doing nothing more was not an option on the table.

We sat down and said, “Okay, we have to draft this from the inside out.” There is no need to give any word on this just because you are interested in the game. ”

This is the first time in the last four weeks, prior to this bill being introduced, that we have met with a political party that has a gambling establishment in the state, and we have presented only a portion of the bill, not the entire bill. No one outside the legislative body had seen the full text of the bill until we introduced it. We kept you up to date on the majority and minority caucuses, as well as the status of House leadership. The senators were involved from day one and engaged throughout the process.

Our goal all along was, “Why now?” Because the day we overlook this issue, the day will come when we will see illegal activity occurring all over the state of Alabama. More and more communities are seeing money being drained from the region and not being reinvested. And each day passes without adequate enforcement, clear laws, or stronger penalties to put a stop to laws that hold those who commit illegal acts accountable.

Finally, multiple polls conducted across the state make it very clear that people want to vote. No matter what the law is.

YHN: Would the proposed Gaming Commission have the power to issue more licenses beyond the seven allocated in the Constitutional Amendment Bill? How would that work?

Senator Blackshire: “Absolutely not. You can't grant additional licenses without a vote of the people. That was the whole point of specifying that location in the constitutional amendment. We're doing all these illegal activities. But we know there are three PCI sites on federally protected land, and we have no control over regulation or taxation unless we can get an agreement that the governor needs to sign.

So if you eliminate them all, there will be three (PCI) casinos left in Alabama. What we're going to do is add up to 7 non-PCI locations, bringing the total number to 10.

The way we decided on locations goes back to a law that was passed in the early '80s that created dog racing tracks, which was Mobile, Macon, Greene, and Birmingham. So we got these four.

And we knew we needed it for other regions because of potential agreements with PCI. They have been requesting a northeast location for several years and it was included in the bill passed by the Senate in 2021.

Lowndes and Houston counties were later additions to these regions, and we thought this made sense given their geographic location. It goes up to 10.

Therefore, neither the Gaming Commission nor the legislative body would have the authority to expand to an 8th, 9th, or 10th license location. This is one of the biggest lies being told on this subject – that the state can always put pen to paper and add more licenses.

The second part to locking them down is an amendment that we introduced in committee and now on floor amendments. The six licensed facilities currently outside the agreement, Mobile, Macon, Greene, and the City of Birmingham in Jefferson County, Houston, and Lowndes, are locked down in that county and in other counties in the state. It cannot be moved.

So if no license is issued there, they will stay there. The location northeast of the Compact is the only potential location with the flexibility to move, and only if the Compact is not reached.

If that happens, you'll have to come back and introduce another bill that changes the law so that it only affects compact locations.

I've seen some organizations state that they can transfer their license to any county at any time. That's not only misleading, it's completely false.

The final point is that all seven of these licenses added an additional level of protection for local residents. Your county commission or city council must pass a resolution saying, “Yes, we support this licensed casino within our jurisdiction.”

If you don't want to do that, you can simply hold another referendum in your city or county to allow voting. And if all three fail, the license becomes dormant within that county and cannot be transferred to another county. ”

YHN: How does the Commission's Enforcement Division fit into the overall picture of Alabama's existing law enforcement agencies?

Senator Blackshire: “This is a specialized enforcement area. ALEA does not have the expertise or resources to focus on illegal gaming activities. Neither does the AG's office. About a month ago, the AG's office I believe he was on record saying that he did not have the personnel to attack all the illegal activity that was being done.

This is a self-funded law enforcement division under the Gaming Commission that works in conjunction with local law enforcement officials.

However, this method would be more specialized and would allow people experienced in investigating illegal gaming activity in casinos, online sports betting, or lotteries to be brought in. A professional auditor will be brought in. I am an expert in this field.

I don't think any existing law enforcement agencies are equipped to handle this at this point.

Needless to say, ALEA has had enough trouble fielding more members and is short, with over 70 more soldiers eligible for retirement this year.

But importantly, this is paid for by the game's revenue itself.

Opponents of this bill like to say that government is growing. The problem with this argument is that we are doing this at zero cost to taxpayers. ”

YHN: If documented and approved by the House, where will the proceeds be distributed?

Senator Blackshire: “All of our funds are split between two buckets, or two additional allocation buckets. 100% of lottery proceeds go to education. From these total proceeds, the lottery receives pay the appropriate fees.

Everything else goes to the Gaming Trust Fund and is allocated annually by the General Fund Committee. They're both for non-recurring costs, and I mentioned some of them in the bills that will be discussed, but they were just ideas, examples of things that need to be considered.

Anyone who says this bill will expand Medicaid is either uninformed or spreading a false narrative, and I believe that is the ladder. ”

I think the biggest thing, especially with Medicaid, is that the general fund request we received from Medicaid this year is up $91 million over last year. If we didn't have additional funding like we did this year, we would have to reduce requests from other programs by $91 million to fund Medicaid just to serve the people under Medicaid today. Probably not.

If this gaming law had been enacted and it was only as a supplemental appropriation option, it would have withdrawn $91 million from the Gaming Trust Fund and provided a one-time non-recurring fee to Medicaid to offset that $91 million. payment can be made. See what it does. Doing so will prevent all other institutions and programs from being excluded.

So we want to be able to pivot. The example I used earlier is, if this had been done when COVID-19 hit, how much faster could we have responded to the state's needs instead of waiting for federal funding? The dollar should have been there. We can now quickly address issues across the state.

What we need to see is very clear, and this is probably the most important thing. First and foremost, the Legislature does not have the power to expand Medicaid. It is the executive branch, and only the executive branch. ”

Grayson Everett is the state and politics editor for Yellowhammer News. You can follow him on Twitter @Grayson270.