California legislator scraps next week’s online poker hearing

California Assemblyman Mike Gatto has cancelled next week’s public hearing on his AB 9 online poker legislation.

On Thursday, Gatto issued a statement in which he called his decision to cancel “the right thing to do at this point because there is no consensus on the issue yet.” Gatto noted that his bill has been tagged with the ‘urgency’ designation and thus could be “resuscitated” at his whim.

Gatto said that he’d made a promise to the state’s squabbling online poker stakeholders – tribes, cardrooms, horseracing tracks and online poker technology providers – that he “would not move forward with anything” that had yet to obtain this elusive consensus.

As last month’s state senate online poker informational hearing amply demonstrated, stakeholders haven’t budged much from the positions they established years ago. Certain tribes continue to insist that (a) racetracks have no business getting into the poker business and (b) other tribes should not be allowed to partner with ‘bad actors’ like PokerStars.