Sen. Rod Wright: Give me PartyPoker.cali or give me death!
California state Sen. Roderick Wright (D-Inglewood) — the legislator behind California’s aggressive efforts for intrastate online gambling and opponent to Barney Frank’s federal online gambling bills — is in some hot water. I couldn’t tell on quickest glance if he’s being hassled over some jurisdictional technicalities or if its indicative of some major shenanigans involving one of the biggest proponents for California’s French-like vision for online poker. But either way, somebody seems pretty pissed off at Wright, as a Los Angeles County grand Jury unsealed an 8-count felony indictment against him yesterday.
Wright is the sponsor of California’s SB 1485, a bill that would immediately kick off licensed and regulated online gambling for Californians in California. The bill has seemed on its last legs since this summer, but just won’t die as California desperately digs into its couch cushions looking for any way possible to to make up for extreme budget deficits supposedly driving the state toward insta-bankruptcy.
The PPA was in Massachusetts this week, testifying before a joint committee on behalf of H4069, which would classify poker as a game of skill — apparently important as that state considers a variety of casino-related legislation.
Go Massachusetts Skillaments, but elsewhere, far more is at stake for states that could care less about the nuances of what is and is not technically gambling amongst avowed gamblers. Thus, PPA Executive Director John Pappas has been crisscrossing the country addressing states considering intrastate online poker, trying to persuade them not to muddy the online semi-gambling waters with legislation that comes to the table inherently flawed, legally and from a competitive market standpoint.
Pappas was in Florida last week, addressing a Senate committee on regulated industries. Florida, as we know, has been working on more and more legal poker for the past five or six years with much success, so why not extend that to the internet? Well, Pappas explains, because problems needing fixin’ at the federal level first. Without it, anything any one state creates, he says, automatically will exist in a a legal gray area that could be challenged in a variety of federal ways. And because of this gray area, and the way poker works, regulated “state monopoly” sites will struggle to compete against the unregulated likes of Full Tilt and PokerStars. (He doesn’t mention those sites by name, but players know that’s who he’s talking about.)
It’s an important argument to begin honing, because right now we have California and Florida moving aggressively in the intrastate direction — supposedly with Iowa and Wyoming about to jump on the bandwagon. Legislation can be a rather cut-and-paste enterprise these days, so if those four states go, then it’s only a matter of time before some 40+ others follow suit, which could undermine, or at least complicate, years of work on by poker’s favorite grassroots advocacy group.
Have a listen. In addition to bringing the California arguments to Florida, for the first time we hear the PPA start to lay out some of the details on how internet poker taxation would work under either the Frank or Menendez bills — with provisions included for individual states to receive their revenue share from the federal regulatory system. We also learn of a new organization — the Poker Voters of America — that has effectively brought the idea of intrastate online poker to the Florida legislature. On its surface, the PVA doesn’t look too different from the PPA. But strategically, they’re fighting the UIGEA in a much different way. Well-meaning but misguided is the gist; can we have your donor list?
