SACRAMENTO – The Catholic Church and California's Indian gaming tribes have struck a compromise that would permit a major expansion of conventional bingo while outlawing electronic versions played on machines that look and act a lot like slots.
Amendments outlining the agreement were inserted into a bill yesterday with lawmakers scrambling to wrap up business before adjourning for the year at the end of the month.
If approved, Senate Bill 1369 would end a legal battle over bingo machines, a dispute that threatens hundreds of millions of dollars that the tribes pay the state every year for the exclusive right to offer slots and other electronic gaming devices.
Most the state's charities and nonprofits support the bill, but a smaller group that has become dependent on bingo machines for a large share of their income remains strongly opposed.
“We're trying hard to make sure that we meet everybody's concerns,” said Sen. Gil Cedillo, a Los Angeles Democrat who introduced an earlier bingo expansion bill for the Catholic Church. “But, at the end of the day, I think this will bring stability and certainty for all the interested parties.”
Cedillo and tribal representatives said most of the state's powerful tribes support the compromise. Tribes wanted a clear ban on bingo machines, which they consider a growing competitive threat that violates their gambling agreements.
The combined clout of the church and the tribes should make the legislation difficult to stop. But backers still must sell it to the Senate's incoming leader, Darrell Steinberg, a Sacramento Democrat who earlier sought to legalize nontribal bingo machines at the behest of a homeless children's charity in his district.
“I have confidence in Sen. Cedillo's ability to strike the right balance, but I want to look at it carefully,” Steinberg said yesterday. “I told him I would get back to him.”
State law gives cities and counties the discretion to authorize bingo for charities, mobile home park associations and senior citizens' groups, as long as the proceeds are used only for charitable purposes.
For years, California attorneys general have warned that electronic bingo machines are illegal everywhere in the state except on Indian reservations and military bases. Courts, however, have issued conflicting rulings.
The latest proposal – co-authored by Cedillo and Sen. Jim Battin, R-Palm Desert – would authorize what the legislation calls “remote caller bingo,” a game televised or otherwise linked electronically to potentially hundreds of locations.
That would enable organizations like the Catholic Church, which has 1,100 parishes in the state, to conduct massive games that could offer potentially six-figure prizes. School districts also would be permitted for the first time to conduct bingo games.
The bill would limit prizes to 37 percent of gross receipts collected for any simulcast game, while requiring at least 43 percent of revenues collected to go to a charity or nonprofit. Many bingo games now return as little as 3 percent to charities, Cedillo said.
But a group of organizations that have become dependent on bingo machines for much of their income say the legislation would be devastating.
“It really does nothing for the charities in California,” said Ravi Mehta, a lobbyist for a group that receives bingo-machine revenue. “It helps the Catholic Church, it helps a couple of mega-charities . . . but this hurts community-based charities that have one operation.”
