- May 8, 2024
-
-
Loading
Loading
Gov. Rick Scott signed a bill that outlawed Internet cafes Wednesday, taking effect immediately. By Thursday, the Palm Coast Internet Café was stripped on the inside. Most of its furniture and computers were gone, except for a lingering Pepsi dispenser.
“The Legislature did the right thing to crack down on illegal gaming operations,” Scott said in a brief statement Wednesday. “We look forward to turning our focus back on jobs and education in this session.”
House Bill 155, the legislation that banned the cafes, arose after the state investigated illegal gambling facilities in Florida that operated as Internet cafes or Internet arcades. It discovered a number of cafes acting as fronts for illegal, untaxed gambling.
The cafes usually contain slot-machine-like games, which customers can play for tokens or cash prizes. Gambling is highly regulated in Florida, but the line between chance-based and skill-based games is blurry in the cafes, said Andrew Johnson, special projects coordinator for Flagler County.
“A lot of places had machines set up like a slot machine or a reel machine,” Johnson said. “And a lot of the games had programmed win percentages in them, so the question that arises is, 'How much of that is based on skill?'”
Flagler County included Internet cafes in its list of legislative priorities for this session, but didn’t adopt a specific stance on the issue, said Carl Laundrie, communications manager for the county. Rather, the Flagler County Board of County Commissioners agreed that the laws surrounding the regulation of Internet cafes were vague. Either the law needed to be clarified or the cafes needed to be banned, the commission decided.
“We recognized that there are a bunch of jurisdictions around the state, some that allowed Internet cafes and some that didn’t, and some that allowed them but placed a moratorium on any new ones as they figured out how to regulate (Internet cafes),” Johnson said. “Because of the variety in how these things were being regulated, the county’s position was that this should be a state issue.”
Johnson and Craig Coffey, county administrator, traveled to Tallahassee early this month to speak to legislators about their priorities, including their hopes for more robust laws about Internet cafes.
Critics of the bill say it will not only stop illegal gambling operations; moreover, it will close legitimate gaming facilities, to the detriment of the state’s job and tax bases. The law includes “Internet cafes,” “adult arcades” and “Internet arcades” in its language, and will close at least 200 cafes across the state, according to the Florida Arcade Association.
“Most arcades are family-owned small businesses that provide local employment opportunities while contributing to Florida’s ad valorem and sales tax base,” said Gail Fontaine, president of the association, in a letter to state representatives. “While the Florida Arcade Association supports the legislative efforts to ban Internet cafes, … we are shocked and quite frankly dismayed as to why we now find ourselves under attack.”
Although Scott’s signature on the bill Wendesday officially banned Internet cafes, the move was not unexpected. Many of the establishments in Flagler County closed preemptively in anticipation of the move, Johnson said.
