PPA chairman suggests Reid/Kyl bill changes
Alfonse D'Amato calls for international player pools and outlines five other areas needing "improvement".
The Poker Players Alliance (PPA) chairman has written to US Senators Harry Reid and Jon Kyl suggesting six alterations to their draft federal online poker bill.
Alfonse D’Amato argues in the letter that player pools should include international users on regulated sites, that the bill ought to offer more flexibility to state lotteries as well as tribes, and that it should drop language which would exclude the likes of PokerStars and Full Tilt for five years.
He also suggests that states already permitting commercial land-based poker should be considered to have opted-in automatically for online poker, and that the proposed 15 month ‘black out period’ is unnecessarily long.
D’Amato also calls for a provision declaring that a player’s net win or net loss from a site during a year should be the amount declared for taxes.
The PPA chairman expresses the group’s “sincere thanks for your work on internet poker legislation” but identifies “some areas where we believe improvement can still be made”, in the interest of poker players and industry growth.
In particular, he calls for the draft federal bill, which was leaked last month, to permit international player pools incorporating users on regulated sites: “For operators, it will allow them to extend their brands and businesses. And for governments, it will increase their revenue streams. The current bill does not recognise the international marketplace and ‘ring-fences’ the United States from the rest of the online poker world. This fact, coupled with the onerous state opt-in provisions, puts the success of this new, regulated market at a distinct disadvantage.”
Significantly, D’Amato also argues against language excluding operators who accepted US players post-UIGEA, such as PokerStars and Full Tilt, unless they can prove that no federal law was violated in the process.
He said: “These provisions seem arbitrary, unduly unfair and possibly unconstitutional. If included in the final bill, the provisions will exclude some of the largest and most recognizable brands that have the deepest experience in offering internet poker services from competing in the US market.” The letter also reveals that former US solicitor general Paul Clement has written separately to argue that such language is “constitutionally dubious”.
The bill would not allow state lotteries to apply for online poker licences and would only allow tribes to do so if the state they are located in has opted-in. “We share the concerns of Native American Indian Tribes who believe their sovereignty is threatened by the current draft bill,” D’Amato wrote.
Last week, Reid and Kyl both admitted it will be difficult to pass their federal online poker bill in the lame duck session as legislation to improve the economy will take priority.
Criticism of the bill has come from the National Governors Association,Massachusetts lottery director Steve Grossman and Kentucky Lottery Corporation president Arthur Gleason, while Nevada Governor Brian Sandoval has voiced his support.