Michigan has recently had some bills introduced that are seeking to hamstring our abilities to run organized charity game rooms - primarily by increasing the existing licensing fees for the charities from $50 per day to $250 per day, without giving the charities anything else in return - the ability to sell more than 15k in chips in a day, the ability to run more games, etc. Most charities at the highest volume rooms seem to be bringing in around $3k for a 4-day event, with lower volume rooms not even coming close to that. Increasing the fee from $200 for an event to $1000 would significantly cut into the ability to profitably run a game for a charity, and without giving anything in return, is completely asinine - and seems to be primarily a ploy to (a) get more income for the state and/or (b) shut down the vast majority of the 180 or so charity game rooms that have opened in the state over the last 2 years. [some people suspect that that would cut the state down to around the 5 or 6 most high volume charity rooms, with more than half of them going under within 2 weeks of the new legislation passing, if it were to do so]
What can we do to most effectively get on the legislature to not pass these bills, and perhaps work to pass legislation that will improve our games rather than detract from them?