Local Charities Say E-Pull Tab Legislation will Impact their Bottom Line
For more than a year, the Osseo/Maple Grove American Legion has had electronic pull-tabs.
“Paper is still about 70% of our pull-tab business, but the electronics, since we brought them in, have become very popular,” said Al Lund, the gambling manager and vice commander of Osseo/Maple Grove American Legion Post 172.
Lund says e-tabs help generate up to $8,000 per month after taxes and expenses. Much of that goes back into the community.
“Last year in calendar ’22, we gave away $211,000 to food shelves, to schools, to scholarships, people in need,” Lund said.
However, he’s afraid that dollar amount may decrease due to an effort by lawmakers to change a core function of the games.
The e-tabs are programmed to use a feature called “open all” which makes it look like a slot machine that you would find at a casino.
A recent ruling by the Minnesota Court of Appeals found that the Minnesota Gaming Control Board improperly allowed the feature. A provision in the House Omnibus Tax Bill would make e-tabs look more like regular pull-tabs.
“Basically, lawmakers have told us they’re trying to fix the law right now,” said Kristy Janigo, the American Legion Dept. of Minnesota Legislative Chairperson. “To bring it in line with the original intent that the lawmakers had and the so-called agreements they had with the tribes.”
Janigo, who also serves on the Maple Grove City Council, is part of a group that’s lobbying state lawmakers to keep e-tabs the way they are now, rather than reverting to how they looked when they first came onto the scene ten years ago.
“In my view, as a millennial, I can’t imagine playing an e-tab like that,” Janigo said. “To me, it’s like telling me that I have to go from playing a computer game to playing an Atari again.”
Electronic pull-tabs at the Osseo Maple Grove American Legion help generate around $8,000 for local organizations.
Debate at the Capitol
At the State Capitol, lawmakers say the deal to authorize electronic pull-tabs in 2012 was done with the understanding that they would be facsimiles of paper pull-tabs.
DFL Representative Aisha Gomez of Minneapolis, who favors the changes, believe the concerns brought up by folks at the American Legion are overblown.
“What they’re asking us to believe is that having somebody going from touching a screen one time, to touching a screen four times, is going to mean that all those people who enjoy playing e-pulltabs are going to say, ‘you know what, take this device back, I’m done. I’m never doing this again,’” Gomez said during a discussion on the House floor on April 27.
Meanwhile, in the eyes of the people at the Osseo/Maple Grove American Legion, the court ruling doesn’t specifically indicate they’re in violation of the law.
Now it’s up to the lawmakers to decide.
“The tribes will tell you that we don’t know how much we will lose on that. That’s true,” Lund said. “But they don’t either. We have no idea how this is gonna hurt us; and there is no safety valve in that legislation that will take care of us if we lose 50-75% of our volume.”
To hear some of the debate on the House floor about electronic pull-tabs, you can view the video below. The debate starts around the 27:00 mark.
Related: Nonprofits Rally at Capitol Against Possible Changes to E-Pulltabs
