Lawmakers have less than three months to take some sort of action concerning the estimated 70,000 \u201cskill games\u201d in the state before a stayed Supreme Court decision stirs up a potential political hornet\u2019s nest.<\/p>\n
The Legislature and Gov. Josh Shapiro enacted a new state budget on July 12 without including a deal concerning the games, which are unregulated, untaxed, and \u2014 under the court decision issued a few weeks earlier \u2014 illegal. State leaders have struggled for years to come up with a solution to the multi-sided issue presented by the games, but until the June 15 court ruling there was no real clarity on their status under Pennsylvania law.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy understanding of the Supreme Court opinion is that they gave 120 days safe harbor for these machines to continue operating and that they are today, at this moment, illegal,\u201d Republican Sen. Majority Leader Joe Pittman of Indiana County said just after the budget deal was made. \u201cWhen that safe harbor date is lifted, it will be up to the law enforcement community to determine how they manage dealing with these illegal machines.\u201d<\/p>\n
Many of the machines are located in small businesses, clubs, and VFW or American Legion posts where they provide much-coveted income. Their loss would likely lead to many unhappy constituents.<\/p>\n
Agreement on some sort of legalization scheme could lead to new revenue. In his proposed budget released in February, Shapiro envisioned drawing more than $2 billion in revenue from such a move, including tax revenue.<\/p>\n
But, as Pittman said, budget negotiators in late June and early July found other, significant sources of revenue to make their concept of a spending plan work. Hence, he said, it \u201creally became apparent that we didn\u2019t have to deal with this issue in these short days that we had.\u201d<\/p>\n
As of Tuesday, there was no clear sign that any movement in the General Assembly on the issue would occur before late September, when the House and Senate are scheduled to return to Harrisburg.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat does not give us a whole lot of room for something to pass the House, the Senate, and get signed by the governor,\u201d said Republican Rep. Mark Gillen of Berks County. \u201cThis has been the subject of debate for years and there hasn\u2019t been a conclusion.\u201d<\/p>\n
At least some lawmakers this week are focused on a much closer deadline.<\/p>\n
A separate state Supreme Court decision earlier this year found that the state\u2019s sentencing framework for second-degree murder is unconstitutional. Implementation of the ruling was delayed 120 days \u2014 ending Friday \u2014 to give the General Assembly enough time to adopt a new framework.<\/p>\n
Many Republicans blame Democrats who run the House for failing to pass a framework-creating bill that already has passed the Republican-controlled Senate, and say the failure to act could result in releases of incarcerated individuals already convicted of second-degree murder.<\/p>\n
Multiple skill games bills have been introduced in both the House and Senate. Democratic Rep. Benjamin Waxman of Philadelphia \u2014 sponsor of a bill intended to protect consumers if and when the skill games become legal \u2014 said on Tuesday, \u201cObviously, there is a deadline that is bearing down.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gillen, for one, doesn\u2019t believe the Legislature will return early to Harrisburg to resolve the issue.<\/p>\n
He said, \u201cIt will probably be done on the 119th day at the 11th hour.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lawmakers have less than three months to take some sort of action concerning the estimated 70,000 \u201cskill games\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":249657,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29],"class_list":["post-249656","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania-headlines","tag-pennsylvania-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249656","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=249656"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249656\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/249657"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=249656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=249656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=249656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}