The Village of Mahomet board of trustees passed an ordinance regulating the licensure and authorization of raffles within the Village on Sept. 22.
The Illinois “Raffles and Poker Runs Act” authorizes the governing body of an Illinois municipality to establish a system of licensing of raffles.
The Village board packet read, “we feel it is in the best interest of the welfare and safety of the Village that raffles within the Village of Mahomet be licensed and regulated, passing this Ordinance will accomplish that.”
Village administration also wanted the board to consider a $25 fee for raffle licenses.
Mayor Sean Widener said that they main reason that the Village was looking to pass the ordinance is because the Village plans to fundraise for Barber Park, downtown renovations and the MARC center. Without the ordinance, the Village may be operating a raffle outside of state statutes.
Some of those fundraising efforts looked to produce hundreds-of-thousands-of-dollars, and the Village believes that it’s too risky to not have an ordinance prior to beginning those efforts.
“We’re not trying to regulate the bake sale at the church or whatever else this is purely to make sure we have something on the books,” Widener said.
Board member Andy Harpst said that charging a church or youth group a fee for a raffle would be exactly who would be hurt, though.
“I’m not looking at it as a money grab but it’s on principle that imposing a financial burden on organizations that are already struggling to sustain themselves financially just seems wrong,” Harpst said.
Calling the fee a “tax”, Harpst said that a fee that may be $25 today could end up being $100 in the future.
Widener and Brown agreed that if the optics were bad, then the fee should go down to zero. But they said that having an organization file their raffle with the Village does offer benefits beyond just notifying the local public.
“We need to have something on the books to help us make sure it’s legal and in compliance with state statutes,” Brown said.
He continued with a story about a VFW raffle in North Carolina that was going to be shut down by the state for not being in compliance. The local government had to pass an emergency ordinance for the raffle to continue.
With the Village ordinance, organizations that register their raffle will be able to host statewide raffles without fear of being shut down in another community.
Board member Brian Metzger said that even with the fee at zero to begin with, if the Village finds that they are spending large amounts of time or incurring large costs associated with the raffle permits, then they could revisit the fee.
Other municipalities, such as Champaign County, the City of Champaign and the Village of Rantoul have similar ordinances already established for raffles.
Each raffle within the Village has to be licensed, but a fee will not be associated with the license. The license will last for 180 days.
