State Rep. Marcus Wiedower brought the House Study Committee on Gaming, which he chairs, to what he called his hometown of Watkinsville on Monday 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 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 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.
Attendees on Monday
The Georgia House created the Study Committee on Gaming through a resolution it passed in the session ending on April 4 of this year.
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| Wiedower 7/28/2025 |
House Speaker Jon Burns appointed Wiedower as chair of the Study Committee and named three other representatives, Matt Hatchett of Dublin, Yasmin Neal of Jonesboro, and Chuck Martin of Alpharetta, as members.
Wiedower, joined by Martin, 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.
The resolution designates three other members of the Committee: Shaw Blackmon of Bonaire, the chair of the House Committee on Ways and Means, Alan Powell of Hartwell, chair of the House Committee on Regulated Industries, and Ron Stephens of Savannah, chair of the House Committee on Economic Development.
Neal is the sole Democrat on the Committee.
Blackmon did not attend the meeting on Monday, but Wiedower invited two Democratic members of the House, Stacy Evans of Atlanta and Al Williams of Midway, to join the Committee at the front of the room on Monday.
Brian Hines, an attorney with the House Budget and Research Office, also attended and sat with the Committee at the front of the room.
Meeting Format
Wiedower began the meeting on Monday by welcoming the Committee members “to my district.”
Wiedower represents three of Oconee County’s four precincts in the 121 House District, which is split between Oconee and parts of Clarke County.
Wiedower said that legislators from Atlanta “want to come see us in our hometowns,” and “a lot of people” would expect to see him in Athens.
“I love Athens,” he said. “Went to school there. Go Dawgs. But I like it a lot better when you come to my hometown. So, I appreciate you obliging me.”
“This Committee is put together just to kind of look at all of it--the impacts, pros and cons, the impacts it may have for the state of Georgia,” he said, referring to gaming.
“We’ve got good friends on both sides of that,” he said, and look forward to hearing from each and every one of them.”
No agenda was released for the meeting on Monday, but the topic was listed as “casino gaming.”
In both the 2023 and the 2024 legislative sessions, Wiedower and Sen. Bill Cowsert played lead roles in trying to get gaming legislation passed. Cowsert, also a Republican, represents Oconee County in the state Senate.
Introductory Comments
Wiedower asked Committee member Powell to open the discussion on Monday, and Powell said “the Legislature can't legalize sports betting or anything else. It takes a Constitutional Amendment to do that.”
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| Powell 7/28/2025 |
“You can have horse tracks right now in the state of Georgia,” he said, “but nobody's going to build one if you don't have para mutual. That's just quite simply the way it is.”
The proposal to allow gambling at “destination resorts...whether it be convention centers, restaurants, hotels, yacht clubs, golf courses, all of those things that you would associate to a resort” has been considered before but not approved, he said.
“The Georgia Lottery only passed the legislature by a couple of votes,” he said, “because it takes two-thirds of the votes” to put a Constitutional Amendment on the ballot.
“No matter what or who wants to say whatever about the evils of gambling,” he said. “There's a lot of evils in this world. But people do apparently like to gamble as is proved by the Georgia Lottery.”
“Legislators don't legalize gambling,” he repeated. “The people of Georgia legalize gambling. It's only up to the legislature if it's their desire to put it on the ballot.”
First Four Speakers
Mike Griffin, Public Affairs Representative with the Georgia Baptist Mission Board, said it is his 18th year representing the Board before the legislature.
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| Smith And Full Panel 7/28/2025 |
Griffin said it is “intellectually dishonest to talk about the benefits of gambling without talking about the detriments.”
“Where gambling increases, crime goes up, bankruptcies go up, addiction goes up,” he said. “And we talk about dealing with casinos, sex trafficking has a tendency to go up in that area.”
Eric Nordin, who identified himself as CEO of RFI Gaming, a gaming equipment manufacturer headquartered in Suwanee, said “casinos can provide a lot of economic opportunity outside of just a direct tax benefits.”
“There's construction of the casinos. There's jobs to run the casinos. And there's also companies like mine that build the equipment, whether it's the machine itself or the displays and all the other entertainment that goes along with it,” he said.
Ed Clark, the president of Atlanta Motor Speedway, now called Echo Park Speedway, said his company wants to “broaden our business footprint” and “partner with an experienced operating company, and create a fully integrated high-end quality resort with a hotel, casino, convention space, dining facilities--from high-end to casual--retail, entertainment, and amusement activities.”
“We're not asking you guys to decide--and your fellow legislators,” he said. “All we're asking is let's do this Constitutional Amendment. Let's make it possible for the citizens to go to the polls and, whether for or against, express their opinion and decide on this issue themselves.”
Paul Smith said he was the executive director of Citizen Impact, “a faith-based organization that represent churches all across this state of Georgia.”
“I'd like to begin by saying we are morally opposed to expanding state sponsored gaming. The pastors I represent are morally opposed to that.”
Hendrix Comments
“I'm here kind of as, I guess, a mother and a concerned parent,” Hendrix, who has been active in the Oconee County Republican Party over the years, said when she came to the podium. “I just want to plead to you that our children have so much stress on them today.” Hendrix
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| Hendrix 7/28/2025 |
“I mean, it's a tough time to be growing up. I'm glad I'm not growing up in it. And the big thing that I sort of blame on it is this thing, the iPhone,” she said, holding up her phone “And it's put a lot of pressure on kids.”
“And so, one of the big things that I'm the most concerned about is the online gambling and gaming that this might expand,” she said. “I'm kind of okay with you going to places because you can make a decision to go or not, but it's really hard as a parent to control this iPhone and what your kids do on it.”
“And you know, we can make all kinds of rules, ages, and that kind of thing,” she said. “But, you know, the one thing, the kids are ahead of us. They figure out how to go around it.”
Because of this, she said, “I just didn't put any controls on my sons's iPhone. I just talked to them about the dangers because...I knew they could go around any control.”
“So my biggest concern about expansion of gambling is allowing it on these things, allowing it on computers,” she said. “And I think we right now are a society of severe loneliness. And part of what it will do is just allow people to gamble in private all alone.”
“I'm a mother of two sons,” she said, “and I want to say I see our young men struggling. And I just don't want to put one more burden on them. I just keep saying we need our young men and we need them to thrive.”
“And I just ask you as our state government to kind of be the parent,” she said. “And is this really what we want to expand in our state? Please, no.”
Wiedower Responds
“I would say, just to echo your concerns there,” Wiedower said. “I have two teenagers. One's in her 20s now, so I can't call her a teenager anymore, but they do find it a challenge.”
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| Wiedower 7/28/2025 |
“There's probably a host of people in this room that could sit down with you and show you exactly how easy it is for them to gamble right now,” he said. “And that is--that has been--my growing concern over the industry as a whole is how easy it is right now.”
“If anyone had a conversation with me directly about the online stuff, you would know that's where my heart is–the fact that there are zero regulations right now and there are countless Georgians right now on these phones circumventing geofencing, circumventing all sorts of things.”
“I would also contend that I have come to believe that the people that operate in this industry in an honest and respectful way are doing their level best to watch for irregularities in gambling to help the people that are going down the wrong path, putting barriers in place to make that harder,” he added.
“And I think that that’s part of the conversation I certainly have is with zero regulation, these kids don't have--I mean they will circumvent anything,” he said. “So I have always maintained that in my efforts it is not to expand or encourage but to regulate and put guard rails on things that are already happening in this state.”
Committee Comments
To follow up on that,” Williams said, “online gaming is old. Everybody that wants to use it is using it now.”
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| Hatchett 7/28/2025 |
“Offshore is here,” he said. “We leave billions on the table. Do we feel good about allowing it to be illegal, or would we like to have some say in it by legalizing it and putting some controls and getting some revenue from it? Because it is not going anywhere.”
Martin said he would like to see the funds from gambling be earmarked for pre K and post secondary education, as is being done with lottery monies.
"I think we're seeing good return on that pre K and...post-secondary education...and would like us to concentrate on those funds staying in that area,” he said.
“I think the success of this Committee will be where we set the numbers on any issue and how we divide the money,” Williams said, “because that is not agreed to yet. But I think the discussions we're having, we'll reach an agreement. I certainly hope. But certainly we have to deal with the issue of problem gambling and how we fund it.”
“I think we're in a good place right now,” Hatchett said, referring to the state revenue, “but we do have concerns with the federal funds that we may or may not be receiving.” Hatchett is chair of the House Appropriations Committee.
“We learn of different things every day,” he continued. “So, I'll be glad to hopefully take a position on this down the road. And we can generate state funds and determine how the state funds are going to be spent.”
“I'd like to see it go to healthcare,” Powell said of the new revenue. “Some people want to see it go to education.”
“Well, you know, there's only so much money you put into education,” he said, “but hard to educate folks who don't have proper healthcare, you know, and those are the issues that we're going to be dealing with more with the most recent federal budget with the cuts that's going to be coming down.”
Wiedower said he expected to call the Committee together again at the end of August at some as yet undetermined location.
Video
The video below is on the YouTube Channel of the Georgia House of Representatives.
Ann Hollifield also attended the meeting and made a separate recording for me. The still images above are taken from the video she recorded. (Hollifield is my wife.)
The meeting begins at 21:11 in the video.
Hendrix made her comments at 1:37:29 in the video.
Wiedower responded to Hendrix at 1:41:17.
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