New Jersey Online Gambling Bill Passes House Committee

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The New Jersey House Regulatory Oversight and Gaming Committee passed Senator Ray Lesniak's online gambling legalization bill with three votes in favor and one against. There was one abstention. The bill was sent to the full Assembly for a vote. Last month the bill was approved by a Senate committee.

According to a report of the Associated Press news agency, the House committee approved the bill with an amendment. The amendment was that the licensed New Jersey online gambling operators could take out-of-state bets if the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement determined that this would not violate federal law. This appears to be an enabling provision only that would perhaps not have immediate utility. It was also reported that the proposed tax structures were different in the Senate and Assembly versions of the bills. No dates have been set for votes on the bills in the Senate and the House. Unofficial sources revealed that there is no room available in the current legislative season that ends in June. Therefore the passage of the bills could go to autumn.

One of the speakers in favor of the bill was Robert Griffin, CEO of Trump Entertainment Resorts and president of the Casino Association of New Jersey. He said that the bill would benefit Atlantic City's casino resorts. He pointed out that millions of Americans were anyway gambling online with illegal offshore operators, without any supervision or consumer protection. The state was losing revenues and the profits and jobs were illegally going overseas. Assemblyman Ruben Ramos Jr. said that New Jersey needs to keep up with evolving technology. The Internet is here to stay and therefore there is no turning away from Internet gambling.

Senator Lesniak and Assemblyman Burzichelli reminded the committee that Constitutional experts had confirmed that the online gaming would be legal as long as the servers, where the bets were placed, were located in Atlantic City. Lesniak also spoke of first mover advantage and the need to be ahead of rival states like Iowa, California and Washington D.C

The dissenting voice came from New Jersey Senator Ralph Caputo. Caputo is a Democrat and former Atlantic City casino executive. He said that it was unfair to confine the expansion through online gambling only to Atlantic City casinos. This would put the casinos elsewhere in the state at a disadvantage. He stated that a state-wide referendum should be held on the issue.

North Jersey.com reported that other gambling bills also passed the committee stage. These included bills on simulcast betting on horse races, to allow horse race betting via mobile devices and to simplify the offering on bingo for non-profit purposes.

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