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The Veterans of Foreign Wars Department of Pennsylvania, with a membership of nearly 60,000 combat veterans encompassing more than 400 posts in the Commonwealth, is a vibrant and vital member of our local communities. We provide safe havens for our Veteran population — venues for active-duty, honorably discharged, and retired military personnel to congregate, socialize, and bond — while also assisting our veterans with accessing critical support in the local communities and vital federal benefits.
Beyond supporting our combat veterans, individual VFW Posts across Pennsylvania also improve our local communities through beautification projects; donations to police, fire, and EMS departments; contributions to human service charities; hosting holiday events for children; student scholarships; disaster relief drives; patriotic events honoring veterans and active military personnel, and more. All these activities and contributions take some of the burden off state and local government.
Faced with challenges in recruiting new veteran membership, many VFW posts have come to rely on the revenue generated by small games of chance, such as paper pull tabs. We have also benefited from the revenue received from electronic games of skill. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court's recent ruling — that skill games are in fact slot machines and may soon be illegal — jeopardizes a vital revenue source and, by extension, the ability of many VFW posts to remain open. This would not only be detrimental to the VFW, it also would have a direct negative impact on communities we serve, as well as transferring added financial burdens onto state and local government.
While the legislature wrestles with the fallout of the Supreme Court decision and how to address skill games, there is immediate action that legislators can take to provide relief for veteran and fraternal organizations: modernize Pennsylvania's small games of chance law to permit electronic pull tabs. Small Games of Chance is the only legal gaming in Pennsylvania specifically created to benefit charitable organizations. It also predates the establishment of legal slot machine gaming in the state.
Since small games of chance were first authorized by the legislature in 1988, they have been a lifeline for many charitable organizations and the causes they support. Part of that revenue supports the ongoing operations of veterans' posts, while a portion must be used to support non-profit causes. This is how our VFW posts have been able to support so many local community organizations over the years.
Last updated in 2013, Pennsylvania's Local Option Small Games of Chance Law, which limits veteran service organizations to only a handful of paper games, is woefully in need of modernization to provide additional options and close the funding gap that will come when the skills games decision potentially takes effect in October. Our neighboring states have modernized their small games of chance laws to permit electronic charitable gaming options, including electronic pull tabs (e-tabs). Modernization has boosted veteran post revenues in those states by an average of 40 percent.
Since the last time Pennsylvania's law was updated, we have seen growing interest in electronic gaming, particularly among younger demographics. Offering electronic pull tabs as an option is important both for our charitable revenues and our efforts to recruit new members. When states such as Ohio and Kentucky modernized their charitable gaming to include e-tabs, VFW and American Legion posts in those states saw significant membership growth with younger veterans. The Indiana legislature also noted the benefit of increased membership for the VFW and American Legion when they approved e-tabs last year.
We understand that some legislators disagree on how best to address skill games following the court's ruling, but I think both sides can agree that our veterans deserve support. While the state House and Senate wrestle with this policy issue, we urge them to act now to modernize the state's small games of chance law and provide relief for veteran and fraternal clubs and the charitable organizations we support.
This is an initiative that should garner bipartisan support and we urge members of the House and Senate to support our veteran and fraternal organizations by modernizing small games of chance.
James "Jim" Brown, State Commander, Veterans of Foreign Wars Department of Pennsylvania. For more information, visit www.playpaforcharity.org.