Vermont Governor Wants Online Gambling

Governor Shumlin asked the Vermont Lottery Commission to investigate the possibilities of online gambling in the state, insiders told American gambling news sources.

With the change in American gambling laws and the switch in the policy of the Wire Act, individual states will have more chance to decide themselves if they allow online gambling in their territory or not.

A growing number of US politicians, such as Vermont’s Governor, start to recognize the possibilities in internet gambling in their home state.

The Vermont Lottery Commission is scheduled to issue a special report on the opportunities in internet gambling to the State Legislature in January 2013.

One of the obvious reasons to make a step towards legalizing online gambling in the state is to increase tax revenues. The governor explained that tax money online gambling could well generate will go for the Vermont state education fund.

In Vermont, all tax on the State Lottery is transferred into the education fund. With the addition of other forms of online gambling such as American internet casino websites, last year’s roughly $20 million gaming tax revenue could substantially grow.

Governor Shumlin is optimistic: “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.”

He explained: “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.”

Shumlin’s Republican opponent for the governorship, Randy Brock, expressed his serious concerns about the expansion of state sponsored gambling.

Brock said: “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. 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.”