Ferries could offer video gambling under proposed bill

Dan Joling

Wednesday, Feb. 2, 2000 | 8:54 a.m.

JUNEAU - They wouldn't exactly be floating casinos, but state ferries could start earning gambling money under a bill sponsored by Rep. Pete Kott.

House Bill 182 amends state gaming laws to allow video gambling where charitable organizations now sell pull tabs. The bill also allow video gambling machines to be placed on state ferries.

All earnings from the machines on ferries would go to state coffers. The state also would earn a 20 percent slice of profits of machines operated under the permits of charitable organizations.

The House Transportation Committee took no action on the bill Tuesday. A Department of Revenue spokesman expressed concerns about the bill but one legislator said the idea had merit.

"It seems to me that any way we could get some extra revenue would not be all bad," said Rep. John Cowdery, R-Anchorage.

Committee Chairman Andrew Halcro, R-Anchorage, limited testimony on the bill to sections of dealing with ferries. Halcro said the Judiciary and Finance committees would consider other aspects of the bill, including language that would ban political and labor groups from holding charitable gaming permits.

Pat Harmon, an aide to Kott, R-Anchorage, presented the bill and said he would have enjoyed using video gambling machines on his two-day trip across the Gulf of Alaska on board the Kennicott last month.

"I read my two novels and I mostly sat around looking at gray water," he said.

But Revenue Deputy Commissioner Larry Persily said charitable gaming is a $300 million industry in Alaska overseen by six people and added that Gov. Tony Knowles opposes any measure that expands charitable gaming. Persily said the department anticipates that video gaming would be more popular than pull tabs, which accounted for $216 million in sales in 1998.

Persily said the law as written requires the state to buy or lease all video gaming machines, maintain them and monitor the activity via a central communications system. Charities would get 30 percent of the profits after payouts, the vendor, such as a bar owner, would get 30 percent, cities or municipalities would get 20 percent and the state would receive 20 percent.

"We're not convinced that the 20 percent state share would cover the cost," Persily said.

Rep. Bill Hudson, R-Juneau, said it was his understanding that video gaming would largely replace pull tabs but may not expand or contract gambling in the state.

Hudson, a former director of the marine highway system, said ferries already have bars on board in which children are not allowed and the placement of video gambling machines would not violate any of the operations of the system.

Whether video gambling machines are socially acceptable is another question, Hudson said. He said he would not want to see gambling in winter months when school children and teams travel and he would oppose the machines on feeder routes.

"You let these rich outsiders who are coming up on the ferry underwrite part of the cost of the system and don't take gambling into the villages," he said.

Halcro said the bill will be held until at least Feb. 10 to allow more information to be gathered.