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January 31, 2010

Hanceville holds off on bingo ordinance

By Benjamin Bullard The Cullman Times

HANCEVILLE — Alcohol is not the only controversial issue facing Hanceville residents, as the city council learned Thursday.

Conducting its work session and council meeting before a crowd of more than 60 concerned citizens, some of whom stood for more than two hours when seats filled to capacity, the council heard pleas from community members not to pass an ordinance that would allow a limited form of paper bingo in the city.

The council responded by striking consideration of the ordinance from its agenda. That means the ordinance will not come up for a vote again unless a council member or citizen approaches the city to revisit the issue.

“The main reason we struck the bingo ordinance was, we felt the most pressing issue is the alcohol ordinance,” said Mayor Kenneth Nail.

“Both it and the bingo ordinance are thick ordinances with problems of their own, and we want to be fair in devoting full attention to the one that’s coming up. The alcohol ordinance is too complex of an issue to tackle along with bingo.” 

Nail said the intent of the ordinance has drawn some confusion.

“I think a lot of people are misinformed about what we are trying to do,” said Nail. “Right now we have no ordinance regulating bingo in Hanceville, and after consulting with the district attorney, we felt that if we were going to have any form of it — even paper bingo, which is absolutely all we’re talking about — there needed to be a municipal ordinance and it needed to be regulated.”

Phone calls seeking comment from District Attorney Wilson Blaylock Friday were not returned.

Currently, Nail said, the city has no law addressing bingo in any form in the city, a circumstance that, by default, puts bingo activity under guidelines set by the State of Alabama. According to current state law, he said, paper bingo is already legal, but without an ordinance in place, the town has no authority to regulate or enforce local laws.

That’s because no local laws exist, said Nail.

“If the people do not want us to pass an ordinance, and we just leave it up to state law, the council is powerless to regulate, say, if a less reputable ‘charitable’ organization were to come along and decide it wanted to set up as a charity in Hanceville under false pretenses. We’re a municipality, and we need to address things that are happening in our city instead of leaving it wide open.”

The issue will remain wide open, though, for now.

“We didn’t resolve anything on bingo because the ordinance is off the table,” he said. “But we do want to do right by people and handle big issues one at a time, because people deserve that.”



Benjamin Bullard can be reached by e-mail at bbullard@cullmantimes.com or by telephone at 734-2131 ext. 270.

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