State Rep. Marcus Wiedower brought the House Study Committee on Gaming, which he chairs, to what he called his hometown of Watkinsville, where he had a personal exchange about parenting and gambling with Watkinsville attorney Pam Hendrix.
Hendrix was the last of five persons who chose to speak before the Study Committee in its two-hour-long session Monday at the Oconee County Administrative Building, and she was the sole speaker from Oconee County.
Holding up and waiving a phone in her right hand, Hendrix said that, as a mother of two sons, “my biggest concern about expansion of gambling is allowing it on these things.”
Young men have enough challenges, she said, without adding easy online gambling.
Wiedower told Hendrix in response that he has a teenage and a now 20-plus-year-old child, and he wanted to “echo” her concerns.
At present, he said, young people are gambling using their mobile phones.
His goal, he said, is not to expand or encourage online gambling, but to regulate it.
As Wiedower’s response to Hendrix indicated, the committee already seems to have decided to propose a constitutional amendment to expand gambling in the state, with the controversy among them on how to spend the money that expansion generates.
The Georgia House created the Study Committee on Gaming through a resolution it passed in the session ending on Apr. 4 of this year.
Wiedower, joined by Chuck Martin of Alpharetta, had sponsored House Bill 686 on the regulation and taxation of sports betting in this year’s session. The bill did not make it out of the House.
For more, visit Oconee County Observations.
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