If more proof was needed that a state’s public health emergency declarations are often only as powerful as the willingness of individuals to follow them, we bring you skill games - the controversial play-for-pay video games crowded in twos and threes in bars, convenience stores and other businesses around the state.

The state gave business owners another reason not to host them in guidances issued since the governor’s public health emergency declaration in March that stated in part:

“Operation of these machines during the current health emergency encourages people to congregate unnecessarily and is prohibited under the Governor’s order of March 19, 2020. Any business operating, servicing or otherwise maintaining a “Game of Skill” is subject to enforcement which may include an order to suspend otherwise authorized in-person operations."

Yet, by and large, the machines are still lit up and open for business in the convenience store world.

Carlisle resident Lakisha Ramsey is happy about that; earlier this week, she told a reporter, she won $720 on a game called “Living Large.”

But the way things are is not playing well with interests like the state’s commercial casino operators – who were forced to shut down their gaming floors around the state in March – only to learn that their less-regulated, lower-taxed cousins are continuing to take bets like there’s no tomorrow.

Earlier this week, a casino-backed coalition fighting for the abolition of this kind of convenience gambling fired off an angry email to state lawmakers with a photo of game play going on at a store in Harrisburg’s Strawberry Square - the same building, ironically, that is home to the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board.

 
What gives?

It appears to be a combination of ongoing uncertainty over the legality of the machines themselves that has kept most law enforcement agencies from moving on them; the ongoing desire of players like Ramsey to play and shop operators to keep their business, and the unspoken rule of this pandemic that has generally seen police officers educating or issuing warnings to rule breakers, rather than throwing the book at them.

Capt. James Jones, operations chief of the Pennsylvania State Police Bureau of Liquor Control Enforcement, which enforces law in and pertaining to the state’s bars and restaurants, said his agents have given notices of violation to a handful of liquor licensees who remained open for take-out food sales and were permitting patrons to play.

But a survey of various police and industry representatives this week found no signs that any convenience store-based operators have been cited under the health emergency orders.

The game’s distributors are certainly pleading not guilty.

On its web site, the Pennsylvania Amusement and Music Machine Association has a statement advising its members “to cease operating and servicing all amusement games, including skill games, in non‐licensed establishments like convenience and grocery stores” during the public health emergency.

Matt Haverstick, attorney for game-maker Pace-O-Matic of Pennsylvania, which is currently fighting a court battle that the company hopes will settle all concerns about its “Pennsylvania Skill Games'” legitimacy once and for all, said POM had issued a similar advisory to its game hosts, asking them to unplug for the time being.

But with police hamstrung and state regulation of the industry literally non-existent, those industry guidances rely on voluntary compliance, for PAMMA members, non-member distributors, and even the store operators.

One store owner, who asked not to be identified to discuss the situation frankly at his independent store in Cumberland County, said he was asked by his distributor to turn his games off and he did, for three or four weeks.

But after a time, with customers complaining about it and letting him know about other stores where the games were still on, and a noticeable drop in foot traffic, he consulted with his supplier, moved the machines several feet further apart in the name of social distancing, got some appropriate cleaning supplies, and plugged them back in.

Because of decisions like that across the independent store business, players like Ramsey are in business. Ramsey, a forklift operator and part-time hotel employee, was able to quickly rattle off the names of three stores in Carlisle where she still plays the games. A fourth, she said, has unplugged.

Precautions are being taken, Ramsey noted.

“What they’re doing now is like making you wear masks and gloves if you want to play the machines,” she said, adding “most people that gamble on the machines don’t want a bunch of people around them anyway." So, in her view, there’s nothing about it that feels any more risky than a trip to the supermarket.

“I would be bored otherwise,” Ramsey said, noting that under the COVID-19 rules “it’s like that’s my last bit of pleasure.”

Jones, with the state police, warned that they and their local law enforcement partners aren’t surrendering forever on the convenience store side of the business.

Besides the question of illegal gambling, it’s also a matter of fairness, he noted, for the liquor licensees who have been cited or had machines seized in the past.

“We have plans in place to begin enforcement in those (non-liquor licensee) locations, and those wheels have been in motion for some time,” Jones said. But since Liquor Control Enforcement agents don’t have general jurisdiction in other businesses, there is a need for some knowledge transfer within the department so the investigations are handled consistently across the board.

And that’s slowed in the face of the ongoing legal questions and, now, the pandemic.

“We have to weigh everything we do based on a risk-reward analysis and at this time without some urgency to prosecute these cases we’re going to go ahead and wait, for the most part, till the pandemic is over,” Jones said. “But the state police are definitely moving toward a more universal solution to the problem.”

Pace-O-Matic and other firms have been flooding the market with their skill games in recent years. Haverstick estimated the firm’s current machine count in Pennsylvania at about 10,000 earlier this year - which opponents say means they’ve effectively delivered gambling to corner bars and convenience stores before the state could react.

There are powerful interests on both sides of this fight.

Game manufacturers, operators and the establishments they do business with - membership-based social clubs, bars and taverns that have felt frozen out of Pennsylvania’s growing gambling pie. They say skill games have been a bright spot in a machine-leasing market once built on jukeboxes and video amusement games that’s been decimated in recent years by smart phones and other changes in the entertainment world.

On the other side are the state’s licensed casinos, angry because the skill games operate without the 34 percent gaming tax imposed on their slot machine profits; and the Pennsylvania Lottery, whose director argues that skill games are a present and future threat to the Lottery’s sales growth and, by extension, its support for seniors programs.

Pete Shelly, a spokesman for Pennsylvanians Against Illegal Gambling, said his casino clients are hoping that the legislature takes action to shut them down.

“Businesses across the state are playing by the rules, and they’re not happy about it. Who is?” Shelly said, “But any notion that the operators of these machines are all following any kind of rules or executive orders or laws is absurd. They’re not.”

This article is a reprint from PennLive.com. To view the original story and comment, click here.