C-U and Champaign County Leaders Consider an “Opt-Out” from Video Gambling

A new state law paves the way for legal video gambling to come to bars and truck stops across Illinois --- unless local governments choose to opt out. A joint study session Thursday night of the Champaign County Board and Champaign and Urbana City Councils considered the pros and cons of the issue.

University of Illinois business professor and gambling opponent John Kindt says studies show that video gambling is a particularly addictive type of gambling. Kindt was a panelist at the s study session, and he says young people have been found to be especially vulnerable.

"By putting these machines in the middle of a student population, this is just the very worst type of gambling in the most vulnerable type of population base", said Kindt.

But the state is counting on tax revenue from legal video gambling to help pay for capital construction projects. In the audience, Larry Swope of the Illinois Pipe Trades Association says that revenue would help provide badly needed jobs.

"It's time we quit worrying about people who MAY end up having a problem, and start worrying about peole who DO have a problem", said Swope, "that don't have work, that if they had work, they could pay their taxes and get construction going. Our people are starving."

County Board member Alan Kurtz pushed for last night's study session. Kurtz is a Democrat whose county board district --- District 7 --- includes the Campustown area --- and most of its many bars. He says he's worried that video gambling machines will prove a dangerous attraction to college students --- even though they state law will require they be placed away from areas where underage patrons are allowed.

"To me, it's obvious that they're not going to be able to control it", said Kurtz. We don't have the police power to be able to be in every bar, every night."

But Champaign City Counciwoman Karen Foster, who also attended the joint session, said afterwards that she favored letting video gambling come to town --- even though she says might have preferred a different way of funding state projects.

Urbana Mayor Laurel Prussing, who moderated the panel discussion, says she'd like the state to replace video gambling with alternative funding sources for capital construction. Prussing says the Urbana City Council will continue to study the issue, but would not say if she thought her city should "opt-out", and ban video gambling locally.

It will be a year or longer before legal video gambling is actually a reality in Illinois. In the meantime, at least 27 county and municipal governments --- mostly in the Chicago area --- have voted to ban the games in their jurisdictions --- the county board bans only affect unincorporated areas.