PA Legislature hasn't pulled the lever on regulating games outside casinos
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State lawmakers have heard concerns about video gaming devices like those that a lawsuit says factored into a clerk’s murder during a robbery at Craig’s Food Mart in Hazleton two years ago.
But bills to regulate the games haven’t passed.
“Unauthorized video gaming machines have proliferated into almost every corner of public establishments,” Jake Corman, outgoing president pro tempore of the state Senate, wrote to his colleagues in a memo on Jan. 8, 2020. “The growth of these machines can be seen at convenience stores, pizza parlors and laundromats to name a few.”
Corman pointed out that some machines fit the definition of slot machines, but aren’t regulated by the Gaming Act outside of licensed establishments. Other machines aren’t gambling devices, courts have ruled, so they’re not subject to the state’s criminal code.
Without regulation and oversight, Corman said there is no assurance that machines operate fairly, that minors are kept from playing or that the state receives taxes from them.
A bill that Corman introduced on July 30, 2020, went to a Senate committee, but no vote was taken on it.
Five months later on Dec. 12, 2020, Askokkumar Patel was working at Craig’s Food Mart when he was shot and killed during a robbery. An immigrant from India, Patel had been shot at a store in Maryland before he moved to Hazleton, seeking a safer place to live.
A lawsuit filed recently on his family’s behalf said the gaming machines can pay out thousands of dollars in cash that makes them “dangerous magnets for criminal and violent behavior.”
The man charged with Patel’s murder, Jafet Rodriguez, had played the games at Craig’s earlier in the day, says the lawsuit, which lists news reports of other robberies and murders that occurred in places with games.
Across the state, 30,000 gaming machines operate in settings that lack safeguards of casinos, the suit says. Those safeguards include bulletproof cages for cashiers or cashless transfer of winnings, a security department with minimum staffing and a weapons ban.
The lawsuit contains House testimony from a state police major who said there are no assurances that the machines give a minimum payout to players, no background investigations into vendors, owners and suppliers and no requirement for contributing funds to help people with gambling addictions.
While the suit quotes Gov. Tom Wolf and a state revenue secretary as saying they believe the games are illegal, the gaming companies have strong advocates.
Tom Marino, a former U.S. attorney and congressman, was a vice president for Pace-O-Matic, one of the game makers named as a defendant in the lawsuit, when he held news conferences in Hazleton in 2019 and in Minersville in 2020. On both occasions, Marino pointed to businesses that he said had illegal gaming machines, while adding that Pace-O-Matic’s machines had been declared legal in Pennsylvania.
State Rep. Jeff Wheeland, R-83, said a manufacturer of games has created hundreds of jobs in and around his district that includes Williamsport and other parts of Lycoming County.
“When so many small businesses, including bars and restaurants, and fraternal and veterans clubs are struggling due to the economic strain caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, video skill games are keeping them afloat by providing them with supplemental revenue,” Wheeland said in memo to colleagues on Jan. 27, 2021.
He introduced a bill to legalize the devices, but tax their revenues at 16% and address their unlicensed or illegal use.
Wheeland’s bill never left committee.
Neither did a bill that Sen. Robert Tomlinson, R-6, Bucks County, introduced in 2021. Tomlinson said games have been placed next to lottery machines, costing the Pennsylvania Lottery $2,284 per month per machine. His bill added skill games and other devices used for gambling to those that would be regulated by the state criminal code and redefined slot machines to include some unregulated devices.
State Sen. John Yudichak, I-Swoyersville, who has looked for comprises to regulate gaming devices as chair of a committee that deals with gambling, said his heart goes out to the family of Patel.
“His tragic death illustrates the dangers of unregulated gaming in Pennsylvania,” Yudichak, who is leaving the Senate, said in an email. “The Pennsylvanian Lottery and the Pennsylvania Gaming Board regulate gaming to ensure public safety and the integrity of the games being played. Without proper regulation of gambling activities, the consumer and those who work in unregulated environments are going to be at risk.”
