That law says anyone who spends more than $2,500 or 20 hours in a calendar quarter trying to influence a state official's decision must register publicly with the state.
The casino group sent big names into yesterday's hearing: Sprague, whose career as a prosecutor and defense lawyer dates to the 1950s, and PCA's adviser, Stephen A. Zappala - a former chief justice of the state Supreme Court.
Sprague wears many casino hats these days: investor (in SugarHouse Casino in Philadelphia); lawyer (for SugarHouse, Rivers Casino in Pittsburgh, and Mount Airy Casino Resort in the Poconos); and chairman of the PCA.
By turns pugnacious and entertaining, Sprague, who is 84, testified before a packed house that he started the group in 2007 in an attempt to give one voice to Pennsylvania's fledgling gaming industry. Three casinos took him up on his offer, he said: SugarHouse, Rivers Casino, and the Mount Airy Casino Resort. Together, he said, the three put up $1.6 million to underwrite the group.
During the joint hearing of the House Gaming Oversight Committee and the Senate Committee on Community, Economic and Recreational Development, Sprague conceded that last fall, in the heat of the debate over changing the state's gaming law to allow poker and other table games, his trade group sent three e-mails to all legislators in an effort to budge them on two points of contention: proposed tax rates for table games, and adding more licenses for so-called resort casinos.
He said that was lobbying - but not to a degree that would trip the 2007 law's rules for registering publicly.
Sprague said last fall's e-mails took the group's executive director, Ken Smukler, little more than four hours to compose and send, at a cost of about $450. He also said the casino group was wide open about the e-mail, sending copies to the news media.
