Today, March 28th, there is going to be a second hearing by the Pennsylvania House Gaming Oversight Committee. In this hearing people are going to discuss about several gaming reforms that the state is considering.
It's going to be in Harrisburg, in Erie, in the state of Pennsylvania. It is not going to be live streamed. The main focus is not going to be online gambling. Instead, there will be a focus on several other gaming reforms, already proposed, such as local share taxes. The list of speakers has 14 businesspeople and officials like Jay Breneman (Erie County Councilman), Kathy Dahlkemper (Erie County Executive), Nancy Agostine (Summit Township supervisor) and many others.
Online gambling isn't the main focus, but it's probably going to be mentioned.
Solving everything regarding the local share tax is something important regarding the legalization of online gambling. If lawmakers get to a consensus regarding online gambling, they won't pass a bill because there is no agreement on the local tax share and several others issues.
This local share was brought to a session in late 2016, since the Pennsylvania Supreme Court stated that the method that was used to tabulate what casinos owed to local communities wasn't constitutional. It was given by the Court until ends of January something that would solve this.
This deadline led to a legislative scramble and there the local share tax was added to an already existing reform last fall. The Senate then wanted to deal with both problems separately.
The deadline was extended, and both houses are trying to tackling the two issues, with other reforms, all in one bill.
