From the Illinois Church Action on Alcoholism and Addiction Problems (ILCAAAP):

The House passed a gambling bill, SB 521 early this morning.  Rep. Ritaamended the bill in the House Executive Committee Memorial Dayafternoon, then filed 3 additional amendments, the last one at 12:45 a.m. So many Republicans spoke out in favor of the bill and thanked Rita forall his hard work. They only allowed one person to speak before the budgetbill passed, but they allowed 9 people to speak on the gambling billbeginning at 12:53 a.m. and completing the vote at 1:19 a.m. on June 1with 96 Y, 11NO, and 1 Present.  Read moreThe Senate comes in at 11:00 today and could vote on this gambling bill (SB 521). SB 521 allows: 

• Betting on ALL IL college teams–community colleges, smaller division schools, Big Ten schools, etc.
• Must bet in person on IL college teams, not on the Internet or cell phone. Can only bet on team, not individual players, for 2 years, which will be expanded. Rep. Zalewski called it “a fair compromise to improve the sports betting market”!
• Sports betting licenses for smaller venues to accommodate Chicago Sky (Women’s Basketball Association) so they can accept sports bet during games.
• Requires the IL Racing Board to make a decision about an applicant for a new Cook County racetrack 21 days after receiving an application, and allow an applicant to make changes to the application if the application is deficient.  
•  Allows all national certified fraternal and veteran organizations to have video gambling, WITHOUT A LIQUOR LICENSE, even if the county or municipality BANS Video Gambling.
• Carve out for Chicago and Cook County–they don’t have to allow video gambling at veteran and fraternal groups.  
• Increased video gambling fees local municipalities could charge from $25 to $250 per machine.
• Allowed Oak Park and Waukegan to keep Push Tax of Penny a bet, they cannot increase the tax.
• Pre-empted other home rule communities from charging extra taxes. Removed the cap on the amount a home-rule community could charge for video gambling (some charge $1,000 – $1,500 per machine.
• Video gambling sales agents/brokers will be licensed by the IGB and charged a fee of $100.  
• Raffles allowed for fire protective districts.

 Sen. Kimberly Lightford has another bill (SB 2342), which could also becalled for a vote. The time to pass this bill has been extended untilJune 15^th! SB 2342 would put all Instant Lottery tickets (Scratch-offs)on the Internet and is a massive expansion of gambling. 

•  Two-thirds of IL Lottery sales are from Instant Tickets. Instant ticket sales increased almost 20% last year during the pandemic.
•  Anyone 18 and older can gamble on the Lottery. The Illinois Lottery conducted a study and found that 63.4% of 18-24 year old’s polled had a low level of gambling literacy.  These young people didn’t understand that gambling is not a good way to make money and that the chances of winning don’t get better after you’ve lost. Read
• Scratching off Instant tickets online is similar to playing a game on your phone. After you scratch off one ticket, a “Play Again” button will pop up.  Illinois residents with a “low level of gambling literacy” and the addicted could lose so much money by “scratching” these online tickets for hours on end.
• The Illinois Lottery simplified registration for online Lottery, added Apple Pay, Google Pay, and uses web-push notifications and nudges on smart phones to lure residents to gamble more! Having a gambling app in your pocket is a constant temptation to gamble.