Casino Gambling Regulatory Structure Discussed
Gaming Regulatory Oversight Authority hears testimony about the role of current, new regulating authorities.
Gaming Regulatory Oversight Authority met on Sept. 12, 2013. Credit: Tony Schinella
A committee eyeing regulation structure of expanded gaming in New Hampshire heard testimony from consultants to the industry, charity interests, and state representatives about the role of current or potential new commissions should have.
Gaming Regulatory Oversight Authority met on Sept. 12, and analyzed regulatory structures if a casino proposal ever moves forward. The discussion mostly centered upon whether a new regulatory body should be considered or whether existing structures could handle regulation.
Some advocated having the current gaming regulatory bodies, including the lottery commission, control oversight structure while others said a new commission would be needed, mostly pointing to the competitive nature the lottery commission has with charity gaming.
State Rep. Katherine Rogers, D-Concord, who worked on the joint committee analyzing the casino bill during the last session, said during the subcommittee work on regulation, the committee gathered a lot of information about structures in other states. That led her to the conclusion that the lottery should handle oversight.
“History, I think, is our best guide,” she said. “Our lottery commission, which is the first in the country, has been in existence for over 50 years, has never had any scandal or any questionable behavior.”
Rogers added that a new structure would be “untested."
Patrick Moore and Rich Labrocca of Game Laboratories International, a company that certifies and audits products offered in about 450 gambling jurisdictions, said that technology was advancing so fast that whatever was decided, information was available for any level of structural oversight, auditing, and could even warn gamblers when they were playing too much.
“Each game is almost like having its own security system within it,” Moore said.
Labrocca added that the state could have entities focused on both enforcement and revenue collections and be at the same table even though they had opposing views of what needed to be accomplished with gaming.
Ed Callahan, president of Rockingham Ventures Inc., called himself “the most investigated individual in the state,” noting that each year, he goes through numerous background checks, fingerprinting, and various licenses procedures, producing hundreds of pages of documents to regulators. He said the lottery was “a tremendous asset” and added that commonalities between current structures should be built upon. However, Callahan also said that the current structures were not enough to regulate a new casino.
“There’s a lot of commonalities between charitable gaming and what might happen if proposed casino legislation passed,” he said. “Whatever type of casino or slot parlor or whatever type of gaming, the Legislature ultimately decides what would be appropriate for this state.”
Attorney Michael McLaughlin and Jan Di Marzio, the operator of the Community Bingo Center in Manchester, disagreed with the lottery handling oversight.
McLaughlin said the state Constitution limits the role of the lottery commission and the sale of tickets was in direct competition with bingo parlors, adding that the current structure provided by the NH Racing/Charitable Gaming Commission was “a relationship-based regulation process,” since most of the entities are churches and nonprofits.
Di Marzio, who has been in the business for more than 25 years, also worried about the competition aspect of the lottery and whether “the needs and wants” of small charity gaming operations would be met if the lottery regulated casinos.
Averill Cate of the American Legion Post in Concord who also works with nonprofits on charity gaming said he was afraid that those groups would “get squeezed out as time goes on.” He said the current structure the way it is was the right way to go, with an oversight body being created over the lottery and gaming commissions. This way, he said, nonprofits would have a place where they could go to air grievances while getting a fair hearing.
“As a nonprofit, we don’t know who to go to,” Cate said. “I heard one commissioner say that we have a lot of power down here. I don’t see it. Lobbyists speak, lawyers speak, and that’s who the representatives listen to.”
Either way though, Dave Wirshing, of Ingenus Management Consulting, the license holder and investor at the The River Card Room in Milford, said the most important factor in regulation was competency and honesty.
“If you don’t have that, the public is not going to have confidence in it and the whole thing falls apart,” he said. “I think, from my experience here in New Hampshire, we've got a lot of those things already in place.”
http://concord-nh.patch.com/groups/politics-and-elections/p/casino-gambling-regulatory-structure-discussed
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