A proposed bill aims to broaden who can get money from charitable gaming in the state by allowing host municipalities to get a piece of the proceeds.

State Sen. Timothy Lang, said the motivation behind this change is to provide communities with minor tax relief and assist local municipalities in addressing issues related to law enforcement.

“So the towns that are hosting will get revenues outside of the standard property tax model that will help local property taxpayers,” said Lang, a Sanbornton Republican. “The idea being is we don’t have our head in the sand and recognize there is some local municipality cost, so we want to give them some way of offsetting that cost.”

When a city or town hosts a charitable gaming organization, it often must allocate resources to address local law enforcement issues, such as lost property, bad checks, and occasionally, incidents of violence. This becomes particularly pertinent when a casino hosts a large tournament, leading to issues like parking concerns that require the local municipality to incur additional costs.

The bill will require the gaming operator to hold 10 days of gaming with 35% of proceeds going to the local host municipality. Currently only approved charities and non-profits are eligible to share in casino revenue. However, the amount they collect can vary since the state allows gambling establishments to deduct rent from payouts.

While bills are being debated in the legislature to restructure the state’s charitable gaming business model, a commission to study the growth of charities and changes in the industry is continuing its work. The group met Monday morning.

After requesting proposals for a consultant to assess the financial and regulatory dimensions of charitable gaming, the commission is now turning its attention to addressing issues related to problem gaming.

In New Hampshire 15,000 to 17,000 people have a gambling problem, which is around 1% of the state’s population, said Charlie McIntyre, executive director of the Lottery Commission.

While no robust system exists to identify those with gambling problems, phrases like “I need to win” or “I can’t make this month’s mortgage,” are red flags of a problem.

But the state does not have a statewide system to prevent that person from gambling.

While individuals can be excluded from physical gaming locations, the process is fragmented, with room-specific exclusion lists rather than a centralized, statewide solution.

For example, if a person self excludes themselves from a gaming facility in Nashua, they could still go to another facility and gamble there.

“I really want an exclusion list that’s statewide and at the end of the day and its region-wide,” said McIntyre. “We had a number of meetings with all the heads of gambling to try and create a sort of a central system.”