Home / Poker News January 2013 / The Poker Grapevine – Iowa Mulling Online Poker Again
The Poker Grapevine – Iowa Mulling Online Poker Again
Posted by: Jo Martin - Tue, 2013-01-29 08:57
The issue of online poker seems to be an especially interesting one for the states these days. With New Jersey just a gubernatorial signature away from legalizing the activity (although that may yet prove to be way too far indeed) and with licensing going ahead as planned in Nevada, the issue does indeed seem to raise more interest than ever before. Iowa has considered legalization before and it now looks like all the buzz surrounding online poker has drawn in the state’s lawmakers again. Only last week, an
online poker bill has been submitted by State Senator Jeff Danielson, which is seeking to establish the criteria based on which the state would begin granting online poker licenses to various operators.
Senators Wally Horn and Randy Feenstra are said to be the co-sponsors of the bill. The bill is a Study Bill, (#1068) which means that it is a kind of a guinea-pig, meant to test the legal waters before a concrete proposal hits the legislative machine. If ever passed, the bill would authorize already licensed entities to start offering online poker. It has also set out to determine the applicable penalties for those without license performing the same kind of activities.
As said above, Iowa already has something of a history flirting with the idea of legal online poker: last year, a similar Study Bill was passed, but it never actually reached the House of Representatives, because there was no interest and therefore no political will to push it through.
The Iowa Racing and Gaming Commission has done a study regarding the potential tax revenues the state would collect from legal online poker and they concluded that the revenues would be in the $3-13 million range, depending on the amount of interest among would-be operators.
