May 30, 2025
By Brian Hews • [email protected]
The only thing this policy really accomplishes is destroying good-paying jobs, crucial city services, and local businesses while transferring the profits elsewhere. BH.
Employees, local politicians, and concerned business leaders attended a community meeting yesterday at the Gardens Casino in Hawaiian Gardens to voice their frustration and anger at the regulations proposed by California Attorney General Rob Bonta that target the cardroom industry, which could eliminate more than 5,000 living wage jobs, cripple local businesses, and slash local tax revenues by up to 50%.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta says he’s trying to “clarify” gaming laws with the new regulations. What he’s really doing is bulldozing an entire industry that supports thousands of union jobs, funds public safety, and pays millions in local taxes.
And here’s the kicker: his own office admits the job and revenue loss in a DOJ-commissioned 57-page economic impact report.
The state’s report, the Standardized Regulatory Impact Assessment (SRIA), was prepared in August 2024 by Berkeley Economic Advising and Research.
According to Berkeley, if Bonta’s proposed regulations are implemented, California’s 86 licensed cardrooms and 36 third-party proposition player firms (TPPPs) will lose nearly half a billion dollars in revenue. That’s not a typo. Cardrooms would lose $464 million, while tribal casinos—conveniently exempt from the same rules—would gain $232 million.
The state’s report, the Standardized Regulatory Impact Assessment (SRIA), was prepared in August 2024 by Berkeley Economic Advising and Research and concludes, using conservative assumptions, that cardrooms will lose hundreds of millions and thousands of jobs will be lost. Click on image to peruse the report.
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The report goes on to say the result will be the loss of 364 full-time jobs per year for the next decade (page 30). That’s over 3,600 jobs gone. And that’s the conservative estimate.
And what’s all this pain for? To enforce “rotation of the player-dealer position” every 40 minutes (page 9-10) and to ban blackjack-style games that cardrooms have offered legally for decades (page 11). Games that were approved by the state, with card rooms relying on that approval, expanded their casinos and offered more gambling tables.
The new rules don’t just ban the games outright—they bury them under layers of conditions that make them unplayable. Current California law allows cardrooms as long as players are playing against each other and not against the house. Cardrooms use TPPPs to act as the house; however, the money the TPPPs handle is independent of the cardroom.
The new regulations would slow the pace of play at cardroom tables to a crawl, alienating players and negatively impacting revenues.
Bonta would require that the player-dealer position can only be occupied by a person seated at the table. Players would not be allowed to place a wager directly against a TPPP who is not occupying the player-dealer position. The TPPP would not be able to settle any wagers at the table when they are not occupying the player-dealer position. Cardrooms are expected to rotate the dealer seat every 40 minutes or shut the table down (pages 9–10).
If this all sounds like a gift-wrapped regulatory favor to California’s tribal gaming interests, that’s because it is. The SRIA states it clearly: 25% of cardroom patrons will likely shift to tribal casinos (page 20), which are exempt from the new regulations. The end result? Cardrooms lose $396 million, tribal casinos gain $198 million, and cities like Commerce, Bell Gardens, Hawaiian Gardens, Gardena, Inglewood, and Compton lose millions in tax revenue. (pages 20–21).
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The report showing the massive losses by cardrooms, and the equally massive gains by the Tribal casinos.
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Want to talk about local devastation? Hawaiian Gardens relies on cardroom revenue for over 78% of its general fund, while Commerce and Bell Gardens rely on it for 50%. When that revenue disappears, so do senior programs, public safety budgets, and basic city services. That’s not to mention the devastating effect on local companies, who will lose cardroom business and customers, just as happened to companies during the Hollywood writers’ strike.
And what about the supposed social benefits? The SRIA admits that any reduction in problem gambling will be negligible (page 23). Most gamblers, it concludes, will go somewhere else—like tribal casinos or illegal gaming venues.
So, the only thing this policy really accomplishes is destroying good-paying jobs, crucial city services, and local businesses while transferring the profits elsewhere.
Additionally, the math throughout the report is sketchy. The SRIA is packed with what it refers to as “conservative assumptions.” There’s no empirical backing for the expected behavior of gamblers, the revenue substitution claims, or the idea that cardrooms can easily pivot to different games. Even the authors admit these numbers are just “illustrative” (page 13).
So why do it? Why nuke an entire industry based on faulty modeling and flimsy projections?
That’s the $464 million question.
“We strongly oppose the Attorney General introducing unwarranted regulations to games that have been played legally for decades, and that will devastate—and worst yet—potentially bankrupt our city,” said Hawaiian Gardens Mayor Dandy De Paula. “We rely on our cardroom not only to provide high-quality jobs but for the tax revenue generated that makes up over 78% of our city’s general fund.”
Bonta’s plan constitutes regulatory overreach with potentially devastating economic consequences. If you care about your city, your job, or your budget, now’s the time to speak up—before your local cardroom becomes a ghost town and your police funding goes with it.
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