Rep. Mike C. Stone led a closed-door committee meeting last week to give House Republicans the chance to hear from lobbyists and special interest on video gambling. Stone, a Sanford Republican, is himself connected to the video gambling industry: he owns a small grocery where customers can play a variety of sweepstakes games on four desktop computer terminals. The games mimic the spinning wheels of a slot machine. Until this weekend, customers could also take their chances on four video-poker-style stand-up machines that lined a wall near the canned vegetables.
Stone said he removed the video-poker-style machines Friday night after repeated phone calls from The News & Observer. State law currently prohibits “electronic machines and devices used for sweepstakes purposes” across North Carolina. A first offense is a misdemeanor, but repeated violations are felonies. Stone said in an interview Saturday that the machines at his O’Connell’s Supermarket on Main Street were OK because of the gaming industry’s interpretation of state law. “Everything we do is legal,” Stone said. But in the midst of the interview, he suddenly said that he was getting out of the business. “We’re going to be out of it,” he said. “We’re done.” He said he recently sold a sports bar that also had the gaming machines in it.
Many owners of video gaming machines and Internet sweepstakes cafes have kept their devices operating while the industry fights last year’s ban on two fronts: in the courts, and with legislators and Gov. Beverly Perdue. Perdue and lawmakers, looking for money to hold off deep budget cuts, are considering making video gambling legal or letting the state lottery run it. Gambling interests are trying to strike a deal and get permission to exist in exchange for more regulation and taxation. A recent Guilford County Superior Court ruling favored operators. But a Wake County ruling upheld the statewide ban. The state’s sheriffs oppose video gambling, though enforcement of the law has been rare while the issue is in the courts.
Stone said he favors letting small business owners like himself run video gambling and supports an outright ban on them before he’d want the state involved. “I’m a free market guy. … I’m not for letting the government go in and do the same thing they did with the lottery,” he said. Jane Pinsky, who heads the N.C. Coalition for Lobbying & Government Reform, said the public should be concerned about Stone’s business interests possibly mixing with his political role. “He shouldn’t be participating in this if he has that financial interest,” Pinsky said. She and others said this only adds to concerns about why the House Republicans held a closed-door meeting Thursday in which Stone, heeding the request of Rep. David Lewis, R-Harnett, ordered an N&O reporter to leave the room just as the first of a half-dozen pro-gambling lobbyists and special interests was about to speak. Stone denied the newspaper’s appeal to stay in the meeting.
Stone downplayed his role in the meeting and said the agenda was put together by the office of House Speaker Thom Tillis. Stone said he had nothing to do with the lineup of lobbyists: “It came from Tillis’ office.” He pointed out that advocates for and against gambling spoke out. “And just to be clear, I couldn’t comment as the chairman of that meeting. … All I did was walk in that room and have that meeting,” Stone said. “I didn’t run anything except the agenda.” Fifteen to 20 legislators attended the meeting, a combined session of three out of eight internal House Republican caucus policy committees: Budget, Jobs and Liberty. Tillis appointed Stone chairman of the Jobs policy committee. Stone also is vice chairman of the House Committee on Commerce and Job Development.(J. Andrew Curliss, THE NEWS & OBSERVER, 2/14/11).
