Church and Tribes Agree On Electronic Bingo

The Catholic Church and California's Indian gaming tribes have come to an agreement that would allow a form of electronic bingo to be played while outlawing the electronic versions that look and act a lot like slots.

Lawmakers are trying to push Senate Bill 1369 through before they adjourn for the year at the end of August.

“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.”

With the church and the tribes in agreement on the bill, it should breeze through the legislature.

But there is still a small group of organizations who believe the legislation would hurt them drastically.

“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.”

The bill, co-authored by Cedillo and Republican Sen. Jim Battin of Palm Desert, would authorize what the legislation calls “remote caller bingo,” a game which is linked electronically to possibly hundreds of locations.

That would enable the Church to conduct 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.

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