Tuesday, February 27, 2024–8:55 a.m.
-David Crowder, WRGA News-
The Rome City Commission has approved a six-month moratorium on new permits for stores that sell vape products and house coin-operated amusement machines.
Rome Mayor Craig McDaniel said the city will be looking at gaming machines and vaping from a public health and public welfare standpoint.
“This six-month moratorium is a research period,” he said. “Our city attorney is going to be involved, and we are going to be gathering data from other communities and from healthcare professionals. It won’t be a situation where we just stop the process for six months. We’re going to have a lot more information six months from now. We’ll decide then what we can or cannot do.”
McDaniel said the city has no idea exactly how many coin-operated amusement machines are operating within the city limits.
The machines are legal in Georgia as long as there are no cash payouts, and are regulated by the Georgia Lottery Commission.
“We can’t charge one penny for a stamp or a license or a permit fee,” McDaniel said. “For example, if a new convenience store opens and they have nine machines, the city doesn’t make a penny off that. All of the money goes to the Georgia Lottery. Some of it goes toward education, but I think there is harm to the community and the people who play those machines are the people who can least afford to play. It’s just a huge vacuum of money coming out of the community.”
McDaniel believes that if the machines are going to exist, the local government should get a cut of the money.
“We have to provide law enforcement and enforce different codes,” he said. “On Monday, we suspended the license of a business in the Garden Lakes area for 60 days because one of our code enforcement guys walked into the building, which is a convenience store, and there was a guy in there that was playing a ding-ding machine while drinking a beer and smoking a cigarette.”
The commission unanimously approved the resolution calling for the six-month moratorium during their Monday night meeting.
McDaniel was a guest on Tuesday’s First News with Tony McIntosh.
