Saturday, November 11, 2006

State officials have decided not to enforce new rules prohibiting the use of
paid workers at any gambling fundraisers by charities until after the
upcoming legislative session. Some charity groups are protesting the new
regulations adopted Thursday by the Indiana Gaming Commission, saying the
rules could make it impossible for them to organize any gambling events. The
new rule, however, is merely a restatement of current state law and any
changes should be considered by legislators, said Ernest Yelton, the
gambling commission's executive director. "We believe it's an issue of
policy," he said. "Our legal staff and I have looked at that statute from
every angle, and we don't see any room around it." The original law was put
in place to prevent organizations from hiring professional groups to run a
casino night or other event and split the profits. That law has not been
previously enforced by state officials, and some non-profits that conduct
one or two key gambling fundraisers a year say they rely on their own
full-time employees to work with volunteers to plan and run the events.
Rachel Tobin-Smith, executive director at the Fort Wayne branch of Stop
Child Abuse Now, said she hoped legislators would make changes to the law.
"They need to continue to protect charities from a paid operator that comes
in and then takes all the money," she said. "What there needs to be is some
fine-tuning that distinguishes between a paid operator that a charity hires
and an organization such as ours ... using permanent employees to help."
Yelton said the state agency would not discipline any groups for rule
violations until after the 2007 legislative session, but that actions were
possible if the law was not changed.