Vermont Explores Online Gambling Potentials?

It appears that yet another US state official has been attracted by the possibilities opened by the Department of Justice‘s December policy switch on the Wire Act – it&s Governor Peter Shumlin of Vermont who decided to look into the opportunities offered by online gambling at state level.

With this aim in mind, he tasked the Vermont Lottery Commission with investigating the developing online gaming potentials; his drive also resulted in a favorable report on the opportunities to raise tax revenues from online gambling.

It appears that significant funds could be generated for the Vermont state education fund, to which all proceeds from the Lottery go – last year only, the amount was around $20 million.

Referring to this, Shumlin said: “Internet lottery is going to be the wave of the future. I’m not suggesting that we won’t sell tickets and I want to sell tickets because it’s good for our downtown stores. But we also have to recognize that the technology is taking us to the Internet and the question is: what’s the role of the Internet in our lottery for Vermont in the future. And we don’t have to hurry but we better figure it out.”

However, challenging Shumlin for the governorship, Republican Randy Brock decided to also challenge his position on online gambling, expressing significant concerns regarding any effort to expand state sponsored gambling.

“Gambling is a serious problem for some Vermonters and we don’t want to make it easier for those folks to get into deeper and deeper trouble,” he assessed, adding: “There need to be some limits on what we do particularly if we’re doing anything that would extend credit to gambling and that’s something that I think we should do very, very cautiously if at all.”

More details and new developments in the Vermont online gambling initiative are expected in January 2013, when the Vermont Lottery Commission is expected to issue a special report on Internet gambling to the Legislature.