“This should not be surprising, nor is it impermissible in any way,” Shelly said.īLAINE SHAHAN | LNP/LancasterOnline A skills game machine seen in Lancaster County Parx Casino spokesperson Pete Shelly acknowledged the casino’s lobbyists sought a meeting with the board to discuss the ongoing court case, because “this is what advocates do.” “From our standpoint, we always look at ways to protect the public in all things gaming … And that pertains to the matter of unregulated skill games.” “There is nothing wrong with the having discussions or taking some action with the industry when the matter is in both of our best interest,” he said. He also said the meeting with Parx’s lobbyists did not influence the board’s stance on skill games, and that it was instead fueled by a number of factors, including a judge’s remarks in the fall of 2019 in one of the myriad court rulings involving skill games.

In an interview, gaming board spokesperson Doug Harbach said the board’s position is that the meeting with Parx’s lobbyists didn’t qualify as a discussion that had to be disclosed under the agency’s ethics code. In fact, the logs haven’t been updated in years. 17, 2020 meeting was not included in those logs. It also requires disclosure on public logs when top members of the agency have contact with those outsiders. Those rules are even more exacting when it comes to conversations with the people the agency regulates. That policy places strict controls on when and how the board’s members and its top staff can interact with outsiders, including lawmakers. The landmark 2004 law that legalized gambling in Pennsylvania makes clear that the regulatory agency should be impervious to outside influence by requiring it to adopt a rigorous code of conduct. The emails also raise questions about whether the Gaming Control Board should have disclosed the meeting to the public. They do not have to name the public officials they lobby, or even identify the issue they want officials to support. Pennsylvania law requires lobbyists to disclose only a bare minimum of information about their activities. The records provide a glimpse into the vigorous lobbying of public officials that the public rarely sees. The effort is captured in emails and other documents, obtained by Spotlight PA, that are now part of a bare-knuckle legal fight over expanding gambling in Pennsylvania. The meeting that day was the culmination of an intense, behind-the-scenes push to influence the decision-making of the agency tasked with being an independent arbiter of gambling in Pennsylvania.

Parx got its wish: Within weeks, the board shed its neutral stance and aligned with Parx and others in a court fight to declare skill games illegal.

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