Gambling news from http://wvgazette.com/
Video lottery retailers team up to deal with ‘racinos’
Oak Hill — Jesse’s Pub and Grille serves up piping-hot homemade pizzas and ice cold beer, but the handful of patrons who stopped by one afternoon last week weren’t eating or drinking.
They were playing video poker.
Jesse Bane, whose family has run a bar in this Fayette County town since 1942, acknowledges that most of his business comes from video poker. The bar’s five poker machines generate about $25,000 in revenue a month.
Still, Bane, fellow bar owners and fraternal organizations are worried about the future of video poker in West Virginia.
The state’s four racetracks want table games, a prospect that would likely pull customers away from the bars, especially those close to “racinos,” or racetracks that feature casinos.
The fraternal clubs and bar owners also fear the state might try to increase its take of video lottery profits. The state already gets 46 percent of the money people pump into the machines.
So Bane and others are banding together to re-establish an organization formerly known as the Club Association. They tentatively plan to call the group the West Virginia Association of Club Owners and Fraternal Services.
They say the group will serve as a “watchdog,” ensuring that legislators don’t pass laws that hurt their businesses. They also are working to improve the image of the more than 1,700 establishments across West Virginia that have video poker machines. The 8,000 machines generate more than $340 million a year in state revenue.
“The dog tracks have the money, but we have the votes,” said Bane, the association’s public relations director. “As owners of bars, we have a lot of influence with our patrons.”
Though there have been past tensions between bar owners and fraternal organizations, the two groups are joining together in the club association.
Jim Long, president of the 900-member Moose Lodge in Clarksburg, is vice president of the association. Other Moose clubs have joined, and Veterans of Foreign Wars and American Legion clubs also are expected to sign up.
Fraternal organizations are allowed 10 video poker machines per club, while bars and other retail establishments can have only five.
“The machines are helping to keep the lodges open,” Long said.
The club association was started in 1991, when bars and fraternal groups operated “gray machines,” a term given to video poker machines when they were illegal.
Mary Lou Mezzatesta, the wife of former Delegate Jerry Mezzatesta, was president and lobbyist for the association for several years.
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