As honest-to-goodness, legal online gaming in Nevada, Delaware, and New Jersey continues to inch closer to a reality, some legislators are continuing to try to get internet poker legalized in California. The latest is State Senator Lou Correa, who introduced Senate Bill 678 on Friday.
SB 678, formally named the Authorization and Regulation of Internet Poker and Consumer Protection Act of 2013, is a simple two-page bill. Its intent is to amend the Golden State’s current gambling code to allow for internet poker sites to be operated within the state as well as authorize the California Gambling Control Commission to establish a regulatory framework for online poker site licensing and operation. The bill does not actually setup any of these frameworks, rather, it merely says that the Commission can go ahead and create them.
Contrast this to Senator Roderick Wright’s SB 51, introduced December 19, 2012. His bill, the Internet Gambling Consumer Protection and Public-Private Partnership Act of 2013, spans (appropriately) 51 pages, detailing everything regarding the legalization and regulation of online poker. Those frameworks would allow the Commission to grant licenses to approved sites to operate for five years. Each licensee would have to pay a one-time staggering sum of $30 million, though this amount, which would go into the state’s General Fund, would be credited against the licensee’s monthly fees. From what it looks like, any monthly taxes on revenues would be draw off of this $30 million fee until it is extinguished.
SB 51 is marked as an “urgency statute” meaning that if it gets the requisite two-thirds vote, it would immediately become law. It is currently sitting in the Senate Governmental Organization Committee, where it has been awaiting further action since January 10, 2013.
Should nothing happen pertaining to the legalization of online poker on a federal level, California could be extremely important to the future of the game in the United States. One of the biggest problems with intrastate online poker is that there are very few individual states that would have enough traffic, when relying solely on the populace inside its borders, to sustain an internet poker economy. Because of this, Nevada amended its online poker law to allow the Governor to enter into interstate poker compacts in order to combine the state’s potential player pool with other states, similar to how lotteries such as Powerball and Mega Millions operate. Delaware has also been reported to be interested in teaming up with Nevada or even European countries to expand its customer base.
As California ranks as the most populous state in the U.S. with 38 million residents (per 2012 estimates), it would be the primary target for an interstate compact by states that legalize online poker. For comparison, Nevada is the 35th largest state with 2.8 million residents, while Delaware is just 45th with less than one million. It is unlikely that their online poker rooms would see enough traffic without interstate compacts.
CA. had rather us, the people, just pay more tax then to get taxes from online poker.