L.D. 121 amends the law of nonprofit tournament games to allow commercial entities to keep up to 20 percent of the gross revenue of these games.

This sounds harmless unless you know that only 25 percent of the gross revenue is allowed to be kept by law. This means they can take up to 80 percent of the net income.

If the intention of this bill is to help nonprofits, it fails miserably.

Unless a nonprofit organization hires these legal bookies, they will find themselves in direct competition for tournament games with special interest groups that have deep pockets.

I don’t know how they managed to spin this to make this sound charitable, but it actually hurts nonprofits by taking away one of the few advantages a nonprofit has for staying afloat.

If the true nature of this bill is to help nonprofits fund charitable causes, then it should be limited to 20 percent of the profit with assumption of all liability — not 20 percent of the gross revenue with no risk.

I hope our Legislature takes into consideration that L.D. 121 will only injure charitable organizations that support our community while lining the pockets of special interest groups.

 

Sophia Truman

Augusta