The Communities for California Cardrooms (CCC) launched a media campaign to expose the special interests which abuse legislative processes to diminish competition within the gambling marketplace.
There has been a moratorium on gaming expansion in place since 1995 that was designed to limit the number of licenses that could be awarded for tables and cardrooms. Nonetheless, California has seen an unprecedented expansion of tribal gambling, signing compacts with 79 tribes that are currently running 76 casinos.
The existing moratorium is set to expire on December 31 this year. This issue has been at the forefront of stakeholder negotiations for the previous five years and the CCC has been working with the legislature to establish a new moratorium: one that would enable tribes to increase their number of licensed cardrooms and tables.
The current compacts allow for unlimited hours of operation, and no limit on the number of operational table games; the tribes operate over 80,000 gaming devices in the Golden State also. However, the CCC believes that tribal casinos are still being stifled in certain respects and need the help of their local governments to address this.
CCC President Clarke Rosa commented: “Any conversation centered around extending the moratorium on the expansion of gambling needs to allow more flexibility for local governments so that they can amend their ordinances to add additional tables.
"A moratorium without reasonable table expansion creates a great inequity among local governments who have active gaming ordinances. A continuation of the status quo is unacceptable. Local governments need the flexibility to amend their ordinances to add additional tables, as each table can generate a tremendous amount of living wage jobs and tax revenues."
