RAYHA's Response to HF 2366 and SF 1863

Below is a copy of the email correspondence sent from Adam Maier, our Vice President of Hockey to Senator John Marty's office. HF2366 and SF1863 are important Bills being proposed that negatively impact RAYHA's ability to fundraise, and ultimately keep costs low for families in the Roseville Community.

Please reach out and share with Senator Marty that HF2366 and SF1863 should not be supported!

Hi Elspeth,

Thank you for the call yesterday. I’m sure that you and Senator Marty are extremely busy as the legislative session comes to an end, so I truly appreciate your time.

I wanted to follow-up and summarize the position of Roseville Area Youth Hockey Association when it comes to the electronic pulltabs bill working its way through the Legislature. Our hockey association is comprised of approximately 500 families residing primarily in Senator Marty's district. As mentioned, we have concerns with HF 2366 and its Senate companion SF 1863. More specifically, we are concerned with the limitations the legislation would place on e-pulltabs. We very strongly oppose this legislation as it would have a direct and extremely negative impact on our 500 families in Senator Marty's legislative districts.

Roseville Area Youth Hockey Association has three e-pulltab locations at bars and restaurants across Roseville and Falcon Heights. We also sell e-pulltabs at the Roseville Bingo Hall. Our association was one of the first charitable gambling operations in the state to adopt the then new e-pulltabs as an option for our customers. You may recall that this charitable gambling format got off to a slow start. However, like many e-pulltab providers, we stuck with the format until it took off. As you will find as your office looks into the issue, this has become a very fiscally rewarding endeavor for our hockey association.

Charitable gambling funds 50% of the $900,000 budget of Roseville Area Youth Hockey Association. Anything not funded by charitable gambling is paid for by the registration fees of our hockey families. As you know, we do not live an affluent area and our hockey community is largely middle class. Hockey is expensive and we have been able to avoid the fate of many first-tier suburban hockey associations (meaning they don’t exist or had to merge with other similarly situated associations) because we have been able to keep the cost affordable for our families as our demographics have changed. We pride ourselves on making hockey accessible to the families of the Roseville/St. Paul/Falcon Heights/Shoreview/Little Canada/Maplewood area. The legislation at issue would make that significantly more difficult and could require us to turn families away.

Changing the charitable gambling laws to restrict e-pulltabs will take money from our hockey association and render our investment in e-pulltabs worthless. That money would have to be replaced on a recurring annual basis by our members - your constituents - in order for them to play hockey. We have a significant number of members that are already struggling to cover their registration fees each season. This legislation would only further burden those families.

We ask that Senator Marty consider our input as he decides whether HF2366 and SF1863 are in the best interests of his constituents.

Thank you again for your time yesterday and for your service to the people of Roseville.

Adam Maier

VP of Hockey

Roseville Area Youth Hockey Association