Louisiana residents who hope they legally can play online fantasy sports games for cash prizes likely will need to wait at least another year as a bill to legalize the practice was shelved for the session today.
Rep. Joe Lopinto, R-Metairie, voluntary deferred his HB 475 in the Senate Judiciary B Committee but hinted at a sequel.
“It may come back next year,” he said.
The bill easily passed the House last month with a 71-20 vote, but new opposition surfaced on the Senate side. The state’s legal gaming community worked against the bill, as did the Louisiana Family Forum, which considered it an expansion of gaming. Lopinto said he was unable to broker a deal with the opposition.
Lopinto has argued that Louisiana is one of only five states that prohibit the increasingly popular prize-based fantasy games for sports such as football, basketball and baseball. Lopinto has said his legislation tracks federal language and that Louisiana’s 1997 Internet gaming law shouldn’t apply in this instance.
—A bill to let law enforcement in nine parishes use license plate scanners to catch uninsured drivers is headed to the House floor, despite privacy concerns from some lawmakers. The House and Governmental Affairs Committee today approved SB 250 by Sen. Ronnie Johns, R-Sulphur, sending it to the House floor. The measure already has passed the Senate.
Mounted on patrol cars, the cameras would scan vehicle license plates and check them against Office of Motor Vehicles records to see immediately if a vehicle has insurance, is stolen or is the subject of an Amber Alert.
If a vehicle does not have insurance, the information would be transmitted to a database manned by the West Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff’s Department. A deputy would review the information and, if the car still did not have insurance, send it to the local district attorney, who then could issue a traffic ticket to the vehicle owner. Johns said those multiple steps with human checks make the program different than much-maligned red light cameras.
“This is completely different,” Johns said. “It’s just a matter of stepping out into a new world of technology.”
The bill says the data is purged after 60 days and cannot be used for any commercial purpose. Misuse of the information, such as selling it to a third party, would be a criminal violation.
Still, some committee members expressed concerns. Rep. Jeff Arnold, D-Algiers, called the program “big brother technology to the 10th degree” and said he was worried about use of the cameras to enforce red light or speeding camera tickets. Arnold added an amendment to the bill to prevent the use of license readers for enforcing civil traffic violations.
“You’re not collecting license plates,” Arnold said. “You’re collecting me every time you collect my license plate because nobody else drives my car.”
A pilot program would be set up in Allen, Ascension, Avoyelles, Bossier, Calcasieu, Iberville, Plaquemines, Terrebonne and Webster parishes.
Jeremy Alford and Jeremy Harper will publish a daily update throughout the legislative session on Daily Report PM. Alford reports on Louisiana politics at LaPolitics.com. Follow him on Twitter or on Facebook. He can be reached at JJA@LaPolitics.com.
