When Gov. Glenn Youngkin sent the bill legalizing so-called electronic skill games back to the General Assembly with amendments, one of those amendments directed that 5% of the tax revenue from the games go toward improving Interstate 81 — a wonderful talking point on the western side of the state, where complaining about I-81 is more common than complaining about the weather.
However, other amendments that the governor added would effectively ban the games from almost everywhere in Virginia, rendering that dedicated I-81 revenue stream almost meaningless.
The governor’s amendments were meant to put the games — which critics call “neighborhood slot machines” — on more or less the same footing as games at actual casinos. For instance, convenience store owners must pass a background check and pay $9,000 for a license. Enforcement would be by the same agency that governs casinos: the state lottery board.
As part of that, the governor proposed 35-mile exclusion zones around existing gaming facilities, which would cover not just the current and future casinos, but also the off-track betting sites known as Rosie’s Gaming Emporium, as well as the state’s horse-racing tracks.
In a column last week, I used a mapping program to show what parts of the state would be ruled off-limits by those rules. Today we’ll do some more mapping, and look even closer at the governor’s amendments. One of those imposes a 2,500-foot exclusion zone around any school, day care center or place of worship. When we apply those exclusion zones in the areas not blocked by the 35-mile rules, we find that almost all of the state would be barred from skill games.
Now, if you think the proliferation of these games is a bad thing, and that convenience stores with skill games are essentially mini-casinos, then you’ll like these rules. I’m not here to argue whether the games are good or bad. I’ve never played one and don’t intend to. I’ve also never bought a lottery ticket, and I voted against the lottery when it was on the ballot back in 1987. However, what I think doesn’t matter. In this case, a majority of the General Assembly thought that legalizing skill games was good policy. This was also a bill that defied party lines, with Democrats and Republicans lining up on both sides of the question. The final vote in the House was relatively close — 51-45, almost evenly divided between the parties — but in the Senate, there was a healthy 31-9 majority in favor of the games. Of those who voted “no,” there were more Democrats (five) than Republicans (four).
For better or worse, the legislature clearly intended for the games to be legalized. If Youngkin disagreed, he could have vetoed the bill. He’s certainly shown he’s not averse to using his veto power. Instead, he sent the bill back with amendments — however, those amendments amount to a whole rewrite of the bill and, as a practical matter, ban the games almost everywhere except where there are some mapping oddities.
Let’s take a granular look — and start with Wytheville.
Wytheville is a place that falls well outside the exclusion zones around the casino in Bristol and the Rosie’s in Vinton. However, when you look more closely, as I did, you find it’s almost impossible to have skill games in Wytheville.
I started mapping churches and schools (I never got around to day care centers) from east to west along U.S. 11 through Wytheville. Everything along Wytheville’s main drag, with the exception of some land near a cemetery, is barred from having skill games. It’s possible even that small stretch is banned, too, since I didn’t map day care centers. We here at Cardinal News are fiscal conservatives, so I relied on a free mapping program that only allowed me to plot 10 locations at a time. We try to be frugal about how we spend your donation dollars. These 10 locations seemed sufficient to make the point: the 35-mile exclusion zones leave Wytheville in the clear, but those 2,500-foot exclusions mean that businesses in the town can’t have skill games.
Wytheville is probably not unique. While it’s a cliché to say that small towns have churches on every corner, the truth is that people in rural and small-town Virginia are religious and do have a lot of places of worship. So it’s not surprising that these 2,500-foot exclusion zones cover almost an entire town.
I also focused on Wytheville because it sits at the junction of Interstate 81 and Interstate 77, so it’s a big trucking center. The TA Travel Center near that 81-77 junction would qualify to host skill games — just barely (there’s a school on the other side of the road). However, this raises other questions.
When legislators approved skill games, they did so on the grounds that the games are vital for convenience store owners — this was hailed as a vote in favor of small business. Again, whether that’s so or not may be a matter of political taste, but that was how the bill was framed. In the case of Wytheville, small businesses don’t benefit from this bill at all. The classic mom-and-pop convenience stores along Lee Highway are blocked by the 2,500-foot zones, but a truck stop owned by the largest publicly traded truck stop company in the country benefits.
Let’s look at one more place before we move on just to show that Wytheville isn’t a fluke. Last week I pointed out how businesses in the southern half of Covington are blocked from hosting skill games because they are all within the 35-mile exclusion zone of the Rosie’s in Vinton, even though that’s several mountains away. Here’s what happens when we start applying even some of the exclusion zones for schools, churches and day cares to the northern half of Covington — everything except a tiny sliver is blocked.
What does qualify for skill games, though, is the Love’s Travel Stop, a truck stop just east of Covington just off Interstate 64. Once again, the locally owned small businesses in Covington are ineligible for the games but a large company is.
State Sen. Bill Stanley, R-Franklin County, who has championed skill games both in the legislature and in his legal practice, points out that last year Youngkin signed a bill that removed the provision that banned methadone clinics from locating within a half-mile of schools and day care centers. Stanley posted on Twitter/X: “Small biz owners are now more dangerous by law than a methadone clinic according to the governor’s amendments to the skill bill. Why? Heroin addicts are treated with better respect than small business owners.”
The governor sought some kind of rough consistency with casinos, but wound up not being consistent with methadone clinics.
Stanley also released a map that plots exclusion zones for churches, day care centers, schools, casinos and racetracks across the state. The result is this:
The governor’s amendments aren’t a total ban, but they’re pretty close. I’ve spent some time looking at those tiny bits of green where games would still be allowed — and the places where they wouldn’t be. Here’s what I found:
Most truck stops are blocked from having skill games
Every truck stop on Interstate 95 would be blocked, and about half of those on Interstate 81 would be. That’s significant because the legislation that the General Assembly passed accorded special status to truck stops, allowing them to have more games than other types of locations. Youngkin proposed reducing those numbers from 10 games per truck stop to seven, but still allowed truck stops to have more games than other places. In practice, though, most truck stops would wind up unable to have games.
As you can see, truck stops along I-95 are unquestionably blocked. I made a rough count of truck stops along I-81 — I searched for “truck stops along I-81.” That search produced some places that are probably more glorified gas stations than formal truck stops. In any case, 27 of the 52 I found would be barred from having games — some from the exclusion zone around the Bristol casino, some from the exclusion zone around the Shenandoah Downs harness racing track in Woodstock, but a few because of churches nearby. An example: The Max Meadows Travel Center in Wythe County is blocked because it’s within the exclusion zone of the Draper Valley Pentecostal Holiness Church.
However, the complex of truck stops at Raphine in Rockbridge County — White’s Travel Center is the best-known — would be allowed to have games because there are no schools, churches or day care centers close enough. This sets up the prospect that some truck stops along Interstate 81 could have a competitive advantage over others because they’d be allowed to have games while others couldn’t (assuming these games would be a draw for some drivers). In any case, one of the beneficiaries here is White’s, which bills itself as “the East Coast’s largest travel center,” not the small businesses that legislators said they were trying to help.
Two resorts potentially benefit
Two places that turn up in those green patches on Stanley’s map are the Massanutten Resort in Rockingham County and the Wintergreen Resort in Nelson County. Massanutten would benefit first. If you’re not a truck stop, you have to have a lottery outlet to qualify for a host location license, and The General Store at Massanutten has one. There’s no lottery outlet at Wintergreen — yet. In any case, neither of these places fits the profile of the type of businesses that legislators said they were looking out for.
In the end, few locations would qualify under these amendments, and many of those that do are not really small businesses.
Legalizing skill games more broadly — or at all — might wind up being a terrible policy, but majorities in the General Assembly have deemed it’s good policy. If you disagree, you can let that be known during the next election. These amendments, though, have the effect of banning the games everywhere except in a very small number of places. It’s hard to see how much money for I-81 would come from those.