Bingo owners drop support for tax
Six weeks after the owners of a video bingo hall in St. Charles Parish said they would work with the Parish Council to pass a tax on the enterprise, they reversed course Monday and persuaded the council to back away from the proposed 20 percent tax on net proceeds.
Attorney Louis Authement, who represents Luling Leasing LLC, owner of the Luling Bingo Palace, told the council that such a tax might be illegal if it exceeded the cost of regulating the enterprise. He cited an attorney general's opinion supporting the decision. The opinion was written in 1991 and applied to traditional bingo, rather than its electronic counterpart, which is governed by a different state law.
Authement said the opinion, written under the tenure of
Attorney General William Guste, indicated that the proposed
St. Charles law dedicating 20 percent of the business's
net win to recreation would be illegal.
"Just table this and take a look at what other cities are doing," Authement said.
Other cities are levying a 20 percent tax on net revenue. Westwego approved such a measure in March. Hammond, which also levies a 20 percent tax, dedicates 25 percent of the budgeted $760,000 in revenue from its two video bingo establishments to a children's museum.
The town of Richwood, near Monroe, gets 25 percent of the profits of two video bingo halls there.
"I'm not aware of any statute that forbids a tax on video bingo," said Michael Legendre, director of the state's Office of Charitable Gaming.
The council tabled the ordinance levying the tax, with council members Barry Minnich, Lance Marino, April Black, Richard Duhe and Desmond Hilaire voting in favor. Ganesier "Ram" Ramchandran and Clayton "Snookie" Faucheux voted against.
Video bingo has been legal in the state since the early 1990s, but has become more popular in recent years because new technology makes the machines resemble slot machines.
Because the outcome of each play is controlled by
electronic bingo balls, the machines are not considered slot
machines, which are monitored by State Police and linked to
a central computer.
Written by Matt Scallan
