Chicago Democrat Luis Arroyo, who resigned from the Illinois House on Friday after being charged with bribery Monday, is imagined to have offered kickbacks to an unnamed senator in exchange for the veteran lawmaker’s support for legislation that might regulate and tax so-called Sweepstakes Machines .
Arroyo was being paid $2,500 a month as a hall lobbyist for a sweepstakes company travel by an ex-Chicago policeman who was fired for associating with a serious pusher , the Chicago Tribune reported last week. The prominent role the largely unregulated Sweepstakes Machines played within the criminal complaint against Arroyo has led to a renewed push to ban or regulate the machines, which closely resemble video poker machines.
Gov. J.B. Pritzker has asked the Illinois Gaming Board to figure on legislation “to tighten gaming regulations, including barring sweepstakes,” Pritzker spokeswoman Jordan Abudayyeh said during a statement on Friday.
The Gaming Board has maintained for years that sweepstakes machine Sweepstakes Machines are illegal gambling devices, and therefore the board supported previous efforts within the legislature to ban them, Administrator Marcus Fruchter said during a statement.
“No revenues are raised from play on the Sweepstakes Machines , machine is direct competitors to the legal video gaming terminals which the state regulates.”
Lawmakers for years have grappled with the way to affect the machines, which supporters say are like the promotional sweepstakes travel by fast-food chains and soda companies but opponents say are a transparent plan to skirt laws regulating the video gambling terminals that have proliferated across the state since they were made legal a decade ago.
At a House committee hearing in May, Cory Aronovitz, an attorney representing clients who own and operate what he called “electronic product promotion kiosks, also referred to as sweepstakes devices,” said the machines aren’t gambling devices because they permit “a consumer to shop for a legitimate product or certificate applied toward the acquisition of a product.”
“And with each purchase, the customer is awarded participation during a promotional sweepstakes where they will win cash prizes,” Aronovitz told lawmakers on the committee who included Arroyo. “There is not any purchase required to participate during this contest.”
Opponents of Sweepstakes Machines have said that loophole has allowed the machines to proliferate in places including Chicago that have banned video gambling, also as in locations like gas stations and laundromats that aren’t allowed to put in traditional video gambling terminals because they don’t serve alcohol, as needed by state law.
“ Sweepstakes Machines are a priority thanks to a loophole that exempts them from oversight under the Gaming Board and paying an equivalent taxes as other gaming devices,” Sen. Antonio Munoz, a Chicago Democrat, said during a statement. “Now is nearly as good of a time as any to revisit the difficulty and regulate these machines to guard consumers.”
“In the case of Chicago’s opt-out (of video gambling), we’ve seen pretty widespread use of those sweepstakes machine as how to urge around it,” Cassidy said. “This is clearly how for people who we as a state decided as a public policy shouldn’t be involved in gaming to be in there anyway.”
Other states like Texas and Alabama have grappled with Sweepstakes Machines , which don’t fall within the normal definition of gambling, said Jennifer Roberts, associate director of the International Center for Gaming Regulation at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas.