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A Senate committee appears ready to flush a proposal to expand gambling in Alaska.


The measure to allow card rooms, in which people could bet on poker and other games, stalled in the Senate Judiciary Committee.

No vote was taken by the committee. When Chairman Ralph Seekins, R-Fairbanks, called for a motion to move the bill to its next committee, not a single member was willing to do so.

With about a month to go in the session, the bill appears set to die there.

"It may be dead, (but) if other members feel they want it brought to the table to be voted on, I'll listen to that," Seekins said afterward. "I don't think the votes are there to move it out of committee if there is a motion."

Sen. Hollis French, D-Anchorage, said he is not ready to bury the bill.

"There are powerful forces behind this bill so I would never say never," he said.

The bill by Rep. Pete Kott, R-Eagle River, has been lobbied heavily by Anchorage furrier and semiprofessional poker player Perry Green.

Green, reached on his cell phone, said he doubted the bill would be resurrected.

"Probably there's such opposition to it for whatever reason that they just won't even comment on it," Green said.

The proposal is to regulate card rooms in which people could gamble on games of poker, rummy, bridge, cribbage and pan. A municipality would be allowed one card room for every 30,000 people in its population, with communities of less than 30,000 allowed one licensed card room each.

The bill, which drew some of the strongest debate last year on the House floor, passed that chamber 22-18. The bill has remained in the Senate Judiciary Committee since May.

To receive a license for a card room, a person would have to pay $25,000 to apply, post a $500,000 bond and pay a $10,000 annual fee for each card table in the establishment.

The amount of money involved made it clear that only those with deep pockets would be able to get licenses, French said.

"It's sort of a philosophical issue: What direction do you want to take your city and your state? In general, I think it's not the right direction," French said.

Melissa Parker, head of the Alaska Poker Association, told the committee that Alaska needs to cash in on the nationwide poker boom. By establishing poker rooms, Alaska players would be less inclined to go outside the state to play in tournaments, she said.

Parker acknowledged that the measure probably would not prevent Internet gambling or illegal poker games in the state.

In an effort to save the bill, Kott submitted to the committee a new version that made several changes, among them a requirement that a player set a loss limit before he can buy chips.

Once that limit was set, it could not be changed for 24 hours and that person could not buy chips over that limit.

Other changes included setting a $4 maximum fee or rake a licensed owner can collect from players each game, barring licenses from being transferred and putting more municipal control over the licensing of a card room and the hours of operation.

The bill is House Bill 272.