Rep. Matthew Hammett, R-Hozier, votes in the Alabama House of Representatives on May 6, 2024 at the Alabama Statehouse in Montgomery, Alabama. He files a bill to increase some gambling penalties. (Brian Lyman/Alabama Reflector)
An Alabama lawmaker has prefiled a bill that would increase penalties for gambling-related crimes.
HB 41, sponsored by Rep. Matthew Hammett, R-Hozier, would raise the designation of some gambling crimes from misdemeanors to felonies. Promoting gambling activity; permitting or allowing gambling in a place a person controls would be a Class C felony and a Class B felony on further offenses. A crime of conspiracy to commit gambling offenses would be a Class C felony and Class B on further offenses.
“It takes it from a misdemeanor to a Class C felony, the first offense, second offense it’ll be a Class B felony,” Hammett said on Tuesday. “For example, if it’s slot machines or something like that, it’s $1,000 fine per machine. If you got over 100 scratch off tickets in the store, it’s a $2,500 fine. We’re not trying to go after the clerks, they’re selling Coca-Colas and run the cash registers. It’s after the people that own the stores or the facilities.”
A crime of possession of gambling offenses in the first degree would be a bookmaking scheme or enterprise of over 10 bets or more than $1,000 dollars; a lottery, lottery ticket, instant win ticket, or mutuel pari-mutuel scheme or enterprise of more than 50 plays or chances; or electronic game. It would be a Class C felony or Class B on further offenses. A person would be fined $1000 for less than 100 lottery tickets or instant-win tickets and $2500 for more than 100.
Possession of a gambling device would Class C, or Class C on later offenses.
Possession of gambling records in the second degree would be a Class A misdemeanor. Further offenses are a Class C felony.
Class B felonies are punishable by up to 20 years in prison. Class C felonies are punishable by up to 10.
Hammett said the bill is a way to add “some teeth” to the law with stronger penalties. He said it does not make anything currently legal illegal.
“If they’re running one of the dog tracks or working under a CA [constitutional amendment], I mean this, we’re not bothering those guys,” he said.
Lawmakers in the 2024 regular legislative session spent much of the session debating and working on a gambling package that ultimately did not pass. Reps. Chris Blackshear, R-Smiths Station, and Andy Whitt, R-Harvest, sponsored a package that would have created a state lottery, limited casino gambling and a state commission to regulate the sector. The bill passed the House in February. But the Senate the following month stripped down the bill. The two chambers were unable to pass a version with the needed votes.
Messages were left with Blackshear and Whitt Tuesday.
Senate President Pro Tempore Greg Reed, R-Jasper, wrote in a statement Tuesday that there are members have been interested in gambling every year since he joined the Legislature in 2011.
” The Alabama Senate is committed to ideals that uphold the rule of law in Alabama which includes ending illegal gaming operations that plague our communities across our state,” he wrote.
Sen. Greg Albritton, R-Atmore, a longtime proponent of gambling in the Legislature, said Tuesday that he planned to go to an appointment where gambling was a topic. But, he added, he hasn’t heard much about gambling for next year’s session.
“It is highly unusual,” he said.
He said he thinks the events of last session have contributed. Historically, gambling bills in the Legislature have made it through one chamber but fallen apart in another. The Senate has generally been more open to comprehensive gambling bills than the House.
“And then last year, the House passed a bill very, very similar to what the Senate had passed twice before and failed in the Senate,” he said. “So it was an anomaly, and I still don’t understand what happened, who shot John or anything? I don’t know.”
Albritton carried the bill in the Senate but filibustered the package in its first vote on the Senate floor. He voted for the package in its first floor vote.
When the conference committee version of the bills returned to the floor, Albritton voted against the constitutional amendment half of the package. The votes on the bill, which received the simple majority of votes but not the needed amount for a constitutional amendment, did not technically kill the bill due to a procedural rule, but it did not later reemerge.
Albritton said in May l that he opposed the lack of sports betting in the package and what he called a lack of regulation for online gaming and a lack of support for the Poarch Band of Creek Indians, who operate casinos in Atmore, Montgomery and Wetumpka.
“The Poarch Creek Indians are aware of HB 41 being proposed by Rep. Hammett,” the Poarch Band of Creek Indians wrote in a statement Tuesday. “We are in the process of reviewing the language and its potential implications.”
Albritton said the version that he voted against would not have helped control gambling in the state or helped Alabama.
“It went against all the principles that I had been trying to get to, which is a comprehensive plan that would put the state in charge of the industry, or at least controlling it, and we haven’t, we haven’t done that,” he said. “That’s where I came from.”
Albritton, who said he had heard about but hadn’t read HB 41, said that the current enforcement between state and local is “pretty vague.”
“I think the main reason that they stopped enforcing the confiscation and everything like that,” he said. “There was just no money in it, and it cost us more to do than it brought in. And, anyway, it just was the laws were too nebulous, or something along that line. And enforcement’s difficulty and costly, and so I think that’s going to be an issue too.”
Hammett, who represents parts of Covington, Coffee and Escambia counties, said he thinks that local law enforcement could do it, and they would in his area.
“I know all the sheriffs there,” he said. “I mean, they bust people all the time for this stuff, slot machines, a lot of scratch off tickets, stuff like that.”
Messages were left with the sheriffs for the three counties.
A message was left with the office forSpeaker of the House Nathaniel Ledbetter, R-Rainsville, about gambling prospects for next year.
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