Morning Brief: Seeing Stars ... or Stripes?

The staff at IGamingNews is working diligently to bring you the latest information from Washington, D.C., and elsewhere on the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act ahead of its effective date.

A quick look at the 121-page rule reveals one million hours will be spent to “develop and establish the policies and procedures required by the Act and this final rule.”

The Treasury has also estimated that the compliance burden, in the first year alone, will exceed $100 million.

The rule will take effect Jan. 19, 2009 -- the day before President-elect Barack Obama is sworn in -- and entities that are on the compliance hook have until Dec. 1, 2009, to, as we Yanks say, get their ducks in a row.

We are awaiting reply from groups like the Chamber of Commerce, the Independent Community Bankers of America, the American Bankers Association and the Electronic Payments Association on requests for comment.

Our contacts with the I-gaming lobby have suggested the Obama administration, should it so choose, could leverage the Congressional Review Act of 1996 -- which we will review in an upcoming piece -- to overturn what will likely be a large number of so-called midnight rules. The act, oddly enough, was last used by the Bush administration in 2001 to reverse some latter-day rulemaking by the Clinton White House.

In the meantime, other efforts by the I-gaming lobby will likely be undertaken to challenge the rule, we hear, but nothing of substance has leaked.

It is also interesting to note that J. Terrence Lanni, the chief executive of MGM Mirage and former chairman of the American Gaming Association, will retire on Nov. 30.

Mr. Lanni has argued on numerous occasions that Internet gambling in the United States is a states’ rights issue.

However, a recent bill friendly to Internet poker, introduced by Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey, is thought to have been backed by Harrah’s Entertainment Inc., whose chief executive, Gary W. Loveman, is the association’s current chairman.

Mr. Lanni’s absence from the association, we speculate, may indeed stir the pot in 2009, when America’s most powerful gambling lobby is likely to press for some form of Internet gambling.