House approves charity gambling bill
NASHVILLE (AP) — The House voted 61-32 Thursday to allow charities to hold gambling fund-raisers.
The bill goes back to the Senate for consideration of several significant House amendments, including one adopted Thursday to limit the number of charity gambling events that can be held at any given place to one per month.
The House vote came after months of debate in committee and more than three hours on the floor over two days. Gambling events by 501(c)3 organizations were allowed by the constitutional amendment voters adopted in November 2002, which was better known for opening the way for the state lottery.
Much of the legislative work on the bill so far has been an attempt to avoid the pitfalls of the state’s last effort to allow charitable gambling, which led to widespread corruption, the federal investigation known as Rocky Top, indictments of various officials and the suicide of the secretary of state at the time.
“Yesterday somebody said we don’t want to bring up the ghosts of the past,” said Rep. Bobby Wood, R-Chattanooga, arguing against approval of the bill. “Ghosts are figments of the imagination. I was here in the 1980s when they weren’t ghosts, but a predator that walked this state and harmed our organizations of good faith, this General Assembly, the government and our state.”
Wood said he thought it was “tragic” that so many of the charitable organizations that used the old law were churches.
“I tell you today that any church, any charity, should ask to be supported on the merits of what they stand for and not on the chance of money coming back from a selfish game,” he said. “I think that detracts from the meaning of charity itself.”
The House amendments require that 25 percent of the gross proceeds of an event go to the sponsoring charity; allow criminal background checks of the officers and directors of a charity, at the discretion of the Secretary of State; limit total prize value to $250,000; and shift investigative authority to the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation.
The House version also eliminated an amendment the Senate had adopted for the benefit of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis that would allow it to raffle off houses in the state’s four major cities on the same day. The constitutional amendment says charities can hold only one gambling fund-raiser per year.
House Speaker Jimmy Naifeh said he expected the Senate to disagree with some of the amendments, and expected the bill to go a conference committee of senators and representatives who would try to work out the differences.
Senate sponsor Jim Kyle, D-Memphis, said a conference committee may not be necessary.
“If there are 17 people in the Senate who want it as the House has written it, I’ll put it up that way,” Kyle said, referring to the number needed to pass a bill in the Senate.
He said he wanted time to digest the impact of the House amendments before commenting on them specifically. He added he wants to talk to various charities that have expressed an interest in holding gambling fund-raisers “to see if this creates an opportunity to do something for them, or if we need to scrap this and start all over next year.”
House sponsor Rep. Harry Tindell, D-Knoxville, said he thinks the bill has sufficient safeguards to avoid a return to the scandalous days of Rocky Top.
“I’m comfortable with what the House passed,” he said. “I think we’ve addressed every concern that was brought before us. I think it’s a strong product and I’m proud of it.”
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On the Net:
See Senate bill 3212 at Tennessee General Assembly: http://www.legislature.state.tn.us/