A casino trade association headed by a former state Supreme Court chief justice rebutted a lawmaker's criticism by saying that it doesn't have to register under Pennsylvania's lobbying-disclosure law because its activities don't meet the legal definition of lobbying.
House Gaming Oversight Committee Chairman Dante Santoni, D-Berks, had posed questions about the Pennsylvania Casino Association and its activities surrounding a bill that would expand casino gambling.
Santoni said Monday that he was still reading through the group's Dec. 1 letter and was considering whether to hold a hearing on the matter.
"I want to check with some legal minds first on the lobbying issue to see whether we should go forward," Santoni said.
House and Senate negotiators are still trying to work out the remaining differences in a bill to legalize table games such as poker and blackjack at slot-machine casinos and to expand the number of slot machines at smaller resort casinos.
Proponents say expanding gambling is a less painful alternative to raising taxes to shore up the state's recession-ravaged treasury. Opponents, however, say the measure is a favor for the powerful gambling industry.
According to the casino association's letter, it sent three e-mails to lawmakers about pending legislation and paid for a radio ad that warned that a state tax above 12 percent on table games would mean fewer jobs and higher taxes for state residents.
Including employee compensation, the e-mails cost less than $500 to send, well within the exemption for registering and reporting in the state's lobbying disclosure law, association board member Richard Sprague wrote in the letter. The threshold is $2,500 per quarter.
Also, the radio ad did not address an actual piece of legislation and did not ask listeners to contact legislators, wrote Sprague, who is an investor in the SugarHouse Casino project in Philadelphia. The letter did not say how much the association paid for the radio ad.
Source:abcnews.go.com/
No comments:
Post a Comment