Wood County Commissioners will hold a workshop in the near future to discuss control over game rooms throughout the county.

Sheriff Tom Castloo brought the subject to the commissioners April 7. He is seeking to increase local control regulating the game rooms.

“The Texas legislature decided to modify Chapter 234 of the local government code giving counties the ability to regulate game rooms whereas there was nothing prior to that giving the counties that,” Castloo explained. “I suggest we get out in front of this to at least know what is coming into the county. We saw before when I first came into office there was game rooms around we had to close because they were not conforming to the rules as they were written. This will give the county rules to regulate these businesses. This deals with offenses against the state as far as betting and gambling. We want to get ahead of this thing so it won’t get ahead of us.” 

County Judge Lucy Hebron said, “It gives the counties authority and latitude to regulate. They set some very stringent standards. The idea is you make it less desirable to come into Wood County and operate a gaming room. The concern I believe the sheriff has, I have also. When you are in one county and basically run the game rooms out, they are going to run to the county that doesn’t have game rooms. The fact that Upshur County, Smith County and Henderson County has it tells me we need something to be proactive in our county unless just relying on the penal code.”

Castloo said, “Criminal activity surrounding these places is what concerns me more than anything else.”

Castloo had presented the regulations last month. “I brought it to Judge Hebron’s attention because of the actions of the Texas Legislature in the last session when they put the enforcement on the counties. We are attempting to set a standard and have a set of rules to go by in addition to what the penal code dictates,” Castloo stated. “They kind of manipulated it so that you don’t have as much teeth and they want the counties to do the enforcing. We could set that up where we could have inspections at any time.”

Castloo feels the new regulations will be an advantage. “They used to have kind of an undercover thing and have people come in on hit and miss information, whereas this will give us unfettered access anytime we wanted to check and make sure if they did get a permit from us, they would not have the unsavory around actually gambling for money,” Castloo said. “The penal code did not change, just the enforcement of it. This will give us more regulatory teeth, and basically you can do it for what they call soft prizes. You could get tickets to turn in for prizes, but in the gambling world you could exchange it for cash and that’s what we want to make sure doesn’t happen. These are requirements we put on them and we will be watching them.”

Commissioners have not yet set a date for the workshop.