Wyoming awaits for gambling regulations

Wyoming gambling legislation will be up for vote in the 2020 budget session despite major opposition from local tribes.

US.- The Wyoming Legislature will take up gambling legislation in the 2020 budget session, after a recent committee’s meeting. Despite the opposition from the Northern Arapaho Tribe the authorities continue to move forward.

The Legislature’s Joint Committee on Travel, Recreation and Cultural Resources agreed to advance a bill about Wyoming’s gambling segment. It would expand the state’s Pari-Mutuel Commission duties to include gaming.

Wyoming won’t legalise gambling with this bill. Nonetheless, it will pave the road for counties to opt-in and leave it up for voters to decide.

“I think this committee realises that, whether you’re for or against gaming, the only way to be able to control it is through a gaming commission,” Chairman Sen. Ogden Driskill said. “There just isn’t any other way. Under existing statutes, law enforcement currently isn’t willing to take on someone running a machine because of the inherent risk of lawsuits that come along with it.

“Nobody really wants to do anything like this,” he was quoted by the Casper Star Tribune. “We have to realise that sometimes, in order to get what you want, you have to do something like this.”

“If that bill passes,” Business Council member Samuel Dresser said on behalf of the Northern Arapaho Tribe. “It’s going to hurt us.”