COUNTY BOARD MEMBER BRIEN SHEAHAN TO INTRODUCE ORDINANCE PROHIBITING VIDEO POKER

DU PAGE COUNTY -- DuPage County Board Member Brien Sheahan (R-Elmhurst) today announced that he would join a bipartisan effort to introduce ordinances prohibiting the operation of video poker devices recently made legal in an attempt to stem the State's budget crisis.

"I will present a resolution at the next meeting of the DuPage County Finance Committee to prohibit video poker in DuPage, and call on every mayor to join our effort," according to Sheahan.

Sheahan is taking advantage of Public Act 096-0034, signed by Governor Quinn which created the "Video Gaming Act" and allows municipalities and counties to prohibit video poker in their jurisdictions.

Sheahan said "Cook County Commissioner Bridget Gainer has shown exemplary leadership on a difficult and important issue." According to Sheahan, "I will also call on every DuPage mayor to join our effort to prevent Illinois from becoming the 'Wild West' of gambling with a mini casino on virtually every street corner-video poker in bars and restaurants will not be good for DuPage County families, and will create an untold burden on law enforcement and local social services."

Today's 12,000 licensed gaming positions at 10 Illinois riverboats would be increased to nearly 60,000 gaming slots with the addition of more than 45,000 new video poker machines scattered in taverns, meeting halls and restaurants in virtually every community across the state. Under the law the Gaming Board has the authority to approve more than 5 video poker terminals per location. This represents an unprecedented expansion of gambling in Illinois.

"The state Gaming Board will be under enormous pressure to maximize revenue from video poker for the state and hence the number of terminals. They will simply be overwhelmed by the regulatory burden which will leave local government having to deal with the real life social fallout…paychecks lost, families broken, lives ruined," Sheahan said.

"The state may regulate the machines themselves, how they are programmed and how they record data, but a proliferation of these machines will cause more problems when fights break out, when payouts are demanded, and paychecks lost, and those problems will fall in the laps of local police and sheriffs," Sheahan added.

While Sheahan applauded members of the General Assembly for their attempts to address the serious deficit in public investment in roads and infrastructure, he cited the costs of policing hundreds of mini-casinos in unincorporated areas of DuPage County as well as the regressive nature of video poker as a revenue source.  "The local share allowed by the bill will be dwarfed by regulatory, law enforcement, and social costs of video poker."