Wright’s Online Poker Bill Wrong For California

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State Senator Rod Wright, a Democrat from the Los Angeles suburb of Inglewood, recently introduced legislation to bring state-sanctioned online poker to California. Facing a budget deficit expected to soar beyond $19 billion early next year, Wright is banking on online poker to bail out his economically troubled state. Unfortunately, this is a very bad bet for poker players in the Golden State.

In his amended version of the Senate bill — SB 1485 — Wright proposes the authorization of intrastate online poker whereby up to three local operators would be granted exclusive contracts to “provide lawful Internet gambling games to registered players in California.” The bill would require at least 20% of gross revenues generated by these operators to be dispersed to the state each month.

So, what could possibly be wrong with the idea of legal online poker for the residents of California potentially bringing millions of dollars into the state coffers? Plenty.

Wright’s estimates that his proposed scheme would generate up to $9 million in licensing fees and as much as $1 billion through revenue-sharing arrangements are just that — estimates … guesswork … hypothesis. Wright’s assessment of the revenue potential of SB 1485 are most certainly off the mark, relying heavily on the mistaken belief that the majority of online gamblers in California will switch from playing at the hundreds of online gambling sites they currently choose from to only three sites approved by the California Department of Justice.

But Senator Wright is aware that asking Californians to give up their freedom of choice is a huge obstacle to the success of his initiative. That’s why he’s planning to force the issue by making it a crime for residents to play online anywhere but in the three state-sanctioned and approved sites. The legislative counsel’s digest for SB 1485 states that “the bill would provide that it would be unlawful for any person to play any gambling game provided over the Internet that is not authorized by the state pursuant to this bill. By creating a new crime, this bill would impose a state-mandated local program.” In order to ensure the success of his plan, Wright is criminalizing freedom of choice for Californians.

Joseph M. Kelly, a law professor at Buffalo State College in New York, has aided in the drafting of online  gambling regulations for Antigua and Barbuda. He’s also examined Wright’s proposal at length and finds some serious problems. Primarily, Kelly faults the bill for empowering the Justice Department of California to arrest citizens who opt to play online with non-sanctioned gambling sites. “It just doesn’t make sense to make it a crime,” said Kelly, calling the criminalization of playing outside of state-authorized sites a “highly unenforceable measure.”

The public relations machine helping to push this bill has dropped a lot of rhetoric designed to construct a perception of danger around Internet gambling as it currently stands, attempting to create the illusion that SB 1485 will protect online gamblers in California. However, removing freedom of choice and authorizing the arrest of anyone playing poker online outside of the three sites chosen by the state’s Justice Department seems less like protection and more like oppression.