Iowa would be the first state in the nation to allow legal in-state Internet poker under a proposal being developed by a bipartisan group of lawmakers, several officials said Friday.

The plan would allow people to deposit between $50 and $500 into a special account at one of Iowa's casinos. That account could then be used to play poker online.

Federal regulations prohibit most forms of gambling between states. For that reason, people would have to play on a computer that is using an Internet address in Iowa.



 
Players would have to go to casinos to make deposits. To avoid out-of-state transactions, they could use only cash or debit cards, not credit cards.

Online poker would bring an additional $11.5 million a year in revenue into the state treasury, according to lawmakers' preliminary projections.

Rep. Mary Mascher, D-Iowa City, expressed reservations about the idea.

"There are a lot of things in Iowa that are illegal, but it doesn't mean we should legalize it," she said, citing speeding as an example.

Legislators and other speakers outlined the idea Friday at a forum on gambling sponsored by IowaPolitics.com.

Gambling opponents condemned the idea.

"As former teacher and arts administrator, I'd like to say emphatically that gambling is a scavenger industry that is greed driven," Des Moines resident Nan Stillians told a panel answering questions about the idea.

"It makes education more difficult," she said, "and any kinds of studies that demonstrate the small amount of addiction or the good that gambling does is just balderdash."

Advocates of the idea call it "account deposit wagering." They refrain from calling it Internet gambling.

"Approximately 50,000 people in the state of Iowa participate in illegal online gaming," said Rep. Doug Struyk, R-Council Bluffs, who is part of a legislative group working on the issue.

"The discussion we are having about account deposit wagers would put caps on it, regulate it through the Racing and Gaming Commission. We would take something that Iowans are currently being abused on by out-of-country, unregulated entities and allow the state to put constraints on it," he said.

Iowa casinos pumped more than $321 million into Iowa's budget in the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2009, according to the nonpartisan Legislative Services Agency.

Mascher said lawmakers must examine the saturation point in the market, where more gambling does not benefit the state. Lawmakers must also weigh the social problems increased gambling could create, she said.

"I don't think there's any doubt that Iowa is addicted to gambling," Mascher said.

Technology has already been developed that can block out-of-state Web users from accessing pre-paid accounts and violating in-state gambling laws, said Fred Farhad Choobineh, an instructor of management information systems at Iowa State University.

Wes Ehrecke, president of the Iowa Gaming Association, said that gambling is a form of entertainment for thousands of Iowans and that the average amount spent at casinos is between $50 and $70 a person. Most people, he said, are responsible gamblers.

Iowa's casinos have a more than $1 billion impact on the state's economy, he said.

"If you really just rewind quickly back 20 years ago, no one really imagined what would happen when we were first in the country to put riverboat gaming in," Ehrecke said.