Tar Heel Hold’Em
State lawmakers opened their legislative short session in Raleigh yesterday with a wild card, floating a bid to bring back video poker that could potentially raise a pile of new cash – about $350 million for the first year and up to $576 million by the third year.
Sen. David Hoyle, a Gaston County Democrat, has been pushing the notion to again legalize video poker, which legislatures banned in 2006, so long as state lottery officials could regulate the deal. Because, you know, they’ve done such a bang-up job with the lottery.
Legislators, even the ones salivating at the windfall of revenue that digitally dealt cards of chance could produce, concede it’s unlikely the video poker issue would gain much traction during the short session. And state lottery officials aren’t offering any opinions on whether they could shuffle their way into the game.
But it might be only a matter of time before they have to play a hole card; lawsuits are currently pending that challenge whether the ban applies to online video-poker-like sweepstakes games. If the legal cards fall right, what are your odds on legislators pulling an inside straight of regulations to ensure most of the chips stay stacked in the state’s pile?
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