Missouri
Skeptical MO senators consider bill legalizing video lottery games
A lawyer for a company hoping to break into Missouri’s gambling market told a state Senate panel Wednesday, April 1 that unregulated slot machines are siphoning millions from schools and that lawmakers should respond by legalizing video lottery games.
Matt Hortenstine, chief counsel for Illinois-based J&J Ventures, called enforcement efforts a “whack-a-mole” game unless retailers have a ready replacement for the machines currently proliferating in convenience stores, bars and fraternal halls around the state. If a particular form of unregulated game is found to be illegal under Missouri gambling laws, he said, developers will change the games and the process will start all over again.
Local law enforcement doesn’t have the resources to match the game vendors, he said.
“The court can only address what comes before the court, that singular machine that is the subject matter of that criminal enforcement, and industry will adapt to it,” Hortenstine said.
Hortenstine was testifying April 1 during a hearing of the Select Committee on Gaming in support of a House-passed bill that would give the Missouri Lottery Commission the authority to license video games for installation in retail locations across the state.
During the hearing, the five-member committee heard conflicting arguments.
Promoters said video lottery would produce badly needed revenue for education and help retailers sustain their businesses. Opponents said lawmakers should let law enforcement push the unregulated games out of the state and that the bill violates constitutional restrictions on gambling and the way tax money from gambling is used.
The bill has been one of the most heavily lobbied of the session. J&J employs 23 lobbyists, including 15 hired since the start of 2025. Torch Electronics of Wildwood, one of the biggest purveyors of the unregulated slot machines, employs 13 lobbyists.
And all the players in the gambling industry have been heavy political contributors, giving $3.3 million to campaigns since the start of 2025. Casinos oppose the bill because they operate the only legal slot machines in the state. And Torch, which in past years opposed the legislation, is neutral this year because the bill does not bar the company from becoming licensed to provide video lottery terminals.
The bill narrowly passed the House and it faces an uncertain future.
Senate President Pro Tem Cindy O’Laughlin, a Shelbina Republican who chairs the committee, told reporters after the hearing that her resistance to expanding gambling has not changed.
“My position is that it is detrimental to family security,” O’Laughlin said.
O’Laughlin said she will meet individually with the committee’s other four members before setting a date for a vote on the bill.
“If it were up to me, I would have had them all removed by now,” O’Laughlin said of the slot machines.
Under the bill, the Missouri Lottery Commission would be given power to license retailers to offer up to eight video lottery terminals at a single location. The games would have to be in a designated area of the establishment, not visible from the entrance.
It would be illegal for anyone under 21 to play and each game would have to pay out at least 80% of the money wagered. The profits would be split three ways, with the lottery taking 31% and retailers splitting the rest with game vendors.
City and county governments would have 120 days after the bill takes effect to decide if they want to opt out of having video lottery games in their community.
Other provisions would impose a $250 per machine fee to pay for services for people with developmental disabilities and increase the $2 boarding fee paid by casinos by adjusting it for inflation since 1993, when it was imposed.
If the law was in effect now, the fee would increase to $4.56 on July 1. The fee pays for the operations of the Missouri Gaming Commission, which regulates casinos, and any money left over is used to fund veterans nursing homes. Under the bill, 50 cents of the fee would be dedicated to building a museum to house artifacts from the Arabia Steamboat Museum in Kansas City, which is closing in November.
The bill is estimated to generate about $300 million in new revenue for education and $56 million for veterans services.
With thousands of unregulated machines in operation around the state, the state is losing that revenue, said state Rep. Bill Hardwick, a Republican from Dixon and sponsor of the bill. He told the committee that ambiguities in state law make enforcement difficult.
The bill will force retailers to remove unregulated slot machines within a year, he said.
“The problem will never be resolved unless the legislature changes the law,” Hardwick said.
Enforcement efforts
Since about 2019, Missouri has seen a proliferation of unregulated games. Owners contend they are legal under Missouri law because they have a “pre-reveal” feature that allows players to see if the next result is a winner before placing a bet.
Torch calls them “No Chance Gaming,” contending the pre-reveal feature removes the element of chance. Games based on chance, like a slot machine, are illegal under the Missouri Constitution outside of casinos or the lottery while games that have an element of skill are not.
That legal uncertainty has also given the machines the name “gray market games.”
The Missouri State Highway Patrol filed about 200 cases with county prosecutors in 2019 and 2020, alleging the machines violate state law. But few actual charges were filed in court and most targeted convenience store owners for misdemeanor violations.
Torch Electronics, the biggest player in the market, along with Warrenton Oil Co., one of its biggest clients, has pushed back aggressively both in courts and in the legislature. The companies unsuccessfully sought a ruling that its games were legal, and protected from enforcement, and is pursuing an appeal of a ruling that its games violate a city ordinance passed in Springfield.
Enforcement efforts have ramped up again since a federal judge ruled in February that Torch’s machines “meet the statutory definition of ‘gambling device’ and are therefore illegal under Missouri law when played outside a licensed casino.”
Just before the decision, Attorney General Catherine Hanaway announced she was cooperating with federal investigators looking at the games and has since filed lawsuits and felony criminal charges against convenience store owners in Greene and Dunklin counties.
Lawmakers should let those cases play out, said Marc Ellinger, general counsel for the Missouri Gaming Association, the lobbying organization for casinos.
More than a century ago, Ellinger said, the courts ruled that games with pre-reveal features are illegal.
In 1913, in a case out of Moberly, a restaurant owner who had a gum dispenser that also paid out tokens worth 5 cents each was found to be operating an illegal game even though customers knew if the next play would provide a win or just gum.
The elements that made the gum dispensers illegal are the same elements present in the unregulated games, he said.
“They are not gray market machines,” Ellinger said. “They are not no chance machines. They are illegal slot machines.”
The bill is unconstitutional, Ellinger said, because it authorizes games of chance and because it diverts money from education programs. Only a statewide vote on a constitutional amendment would make them legal, he said.
Scott Pool, an attorney for J&J, said the bill is constitutional. The revenue that would go to veterans and other programs are fees on the retailers and vendors, not money from players, he said.
“The funding provisions are absolutely constitutional,” he said.
Revenue needs
The money generated by unregulated machines has become a major source of support for convenience store owners, said Lynn Wallis, owner of a company that operates 50 convenience stores.
When the machines were being introduced, she said, some retailers took them and others did not. The ones that did are enjoying larger profits, she said.
Her company has 18 stores where the games are installed, she said, and took in more than $1.5 million in 2025.
She estimated there are 30,000 to 40,000 unregulated machines across Missouri. There are approximately 13,000 slot machines at the state’s regulated casinos.
“With all the machines that are generating this revenue, the state should be taking some advantage of that,” Wallis said.
Angie Schulte, lobbyist for Casey’s General Stores, said the company studied what it would make if it put the games in their stores. Of the company’s 400 stores in Missouri, 148 are large enough to house the games.
With four to five games per store, she said, the company estimated it could increase profits by $63,000 in each location.
There is no accounting of the amounts being wagered in the unregulated games. Based on Schulte’s estimate of revenue and the low end of Wallis’s estimate on the numbers, profits could be approaching $2 billion annually.The state’s revenue from gambling totaled about $700 million in the most recent fiscal year.
At the 13 casinos, $18.2 billion was wagered and the state received $363 million from the 21% tax on the money from lost wagers.
So far, tax revenue from casinos is up about 7.5% this fiscal year, meaning the amounts being lost are going up.
Since Dec. 1, everyone over 21 with a smart phone can make bets on sporting events. In the first three months, $1.2 billion was wagered.
The lottery sold $1.6 billion in tickets in the fiscal year that ended June 30 and provided $337 million for education programs. The lottery’s net revenue is up about 4% so far in the current fiscal year.
Missouri will need revenue if it wants to eliminate the income tax, Hortenstine said. Video lottery will keep its promise, unlike sports wagering, he said.
During the campaign in 2024, promoters of sports wagering aired commercials that portrayed it as a boon to education funding.
But that constitutional amendment included provisions allowing sports bookmakers to deduct all of their promotional costs from their net revenue. Betting began Dec. 1 and in the first two months, the dominant players in the market, FanDuel and DraftKings, paid no taxes and carried over paper losses into February. The total tax revenue was $659,196 from all sports books.
Both companies reported net earnings in February and the total taxes from sports wagering for the month was $1.2 million.
The results from sports betting should be a spur to act on the video lottery bill, Hortenstine said. Lawmakers were lobbied heavily to legalize sports betting before the initiative and lawmakers probably would have more strict limits on deductions for promotional costs.
“Let’s finish the work and address this properly through the legislative process that you can control,” Hortenstine said, “and make the best possible solution to this problem.”
This story was first published at missouriindependent.com.
Overly optimistic predictions for revenue from the lottery and casino taxes will cost Missouri school districts $245 per pupil before the fiscal year ends in June. And state lawmakers are now building next year’s budget around other funding sources that may prove just as uncertain.
The Missouri Senate on Wednesday approved a spending plan for K-12 education that dips into money set aside for renovations on the state Capitol Building. During debate, state Sen. Rusty Black, chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said he’s received no assurance from House Budget Committee Chairman Dirk Deaton that he will agree to the diversion or promises from Gov. Mike Kehoe that the spending will be approved if it is in the final budget.
“Have you talked to the second floor?” state Sen. Lincoln Hough, a Republican from Springfield, asked Black, referring to Kehoe’s office.
“No guarantees,” said Black, a Republican from Chillicothe.
“What if he vetoes that,” Hough asked a little later in the discussion.
“Anybody that sent me a thank you for doing this would probably want their thank you back,” Black replied.
The Senate budget uses $118 million from the Missouri State Capitol Commission to close a gap in the foundation formula, the basic state aid program for public schools. Another $15.2 million was added to school transportation funding.
Most of the $4.3 billion for the foundation formula and $361.5 million for transportation in the current budget comes from the general revenue fund. The remainder is provided by lottery revenue, casino taxes and other funds.
The formula is designed to provide school districts enough money so each district can spend an amount for each student that is similar to that being spent on high-performing districts. Called the state adequacy target, it is $7,145 during the current fiscal year.
“It is unlikely that the amount of revenue received from lottery, cigarette tax and gaming funds will meet the amount appropriated,” the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education said in a statement to The Independent.
The department predicts a shortfall of approximately $138 million from those funds in total. That would reduce the amount paid on the state adequacy target from $7,145 to just over $6,900.
State Sen. Lincoln Hough, a Republican from Springfield, speaks Wednesday on the Senate’s budget proposal Wednesday (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).
The appropriation bill for the education department was the first of 12 spending bills to fund state government operations approved Wednesday in the Senate. Democrats opposed many of the bills, sometimes picking up one or two Republicans but never putting any bill in danger of failing to receive the 18 votes needed.
Some of the major differences with the budget plan approved last month in the Missouri House are:
- Reversing a radical overhaul of higher education funding that took all of the direct support for community colleges and state universities and redistributed it based on full-time student counts. Some schools would have received substantial increases, like an additional $30 million for Missouri State University in Springfield, while others, like Lincoln University in Jefferson City and Truman State University in Kirksville, would be cut by up to 50%.
- Restoring money cut from child care subsidies.
- Moving about $61 million in funding for state information technology support to the Department of Social Services to help the department prepare for implementation of new federal welfare program rules and meet client service requirements.
- Cutting $42 million for payments on a trouble-plagued accounting system, instead setting aside about $5 million to revamp and revise the system while keeping the older system intact as a backup.
The next action on the 12 bills will be a conference with members of the House and Senate negotiating differences between the two spending plans. After the bills passed, Black said he will turn to four bills for construction and maintenance of state facilities, including a reappropriation bill for ongoing projects, next week.
All spending bills must be passed by May 8.
The Senate budget for operations uses $48.8 billion from all funds, including $15.5 billion from general revenue. That is $1.7 billion less overall than the versions passed in the House last month and $3.3 billion less than requested by Kehoe in January.
Much of the apparent savings is from shifting large ongoing projects, like a $1.7 billion broadband construction program, the reappropriations bill.
The general revenue portion remains in deficit to expected revenues of $13.6 billion and would require $1.9 billion from accumulated surpluses to sustain spending.
Hough, with support from Democrats, wanted to dip deeper into the surplus, which stood at $3 billion on March 31, because the foundation formula is short of what state law says should be spent by $190 million.
Hough’s amendment to add the money failed on a 10-20 vote. No other Republicans voted for the amendment.
The formula is underfunded because the budget does not allow for extra weight given to some student needs in a bill passed in 2024 and does not fund the incentive for schools to maintain five-day weeks.
“Missourians deserve better than the budget that we have presented before us,” state Sen. Maggie Nurrenbern, a Kansas City Democrat, said as the day of debate neared its conclusion. “The reason why is, over the last decade, there have been special tax breaks all over the place for the wealthy and the well connected.”
The state would have an additional $3.8 billion in revenue if those tax cuts had not been passed, Nurrenbern said.
“A lot of these problems in our budget really are self-inflicted,” Nurrenbern said.
The difficulties in sustaining school funding in the current year — and the need to tap funds set aside four years ago for expanding the capitol — is due to overly optimistic projections for spending lottery proceeds and casino taxes.
Money from the lottery is also tapped to provide a portion of the budget for school transportation, community colleges and four-year universities. When they wrote the budget currently being used during last year’s session, lawmakers decided the lottery should provide $410.5 million.
It was the third year in a row that the lottery was asked to provide more than $400 million. In the first two years, the revenue was $389.8 million and $337.5 million. So far this year, lottery revenue is up 4%, a pace that would provide about $350 million, leaving it $60 million short of appropriations.
Casino revenue, which is exclusively used in the public school formula, was penciled in to provide $385 million, or $22 million more than taxes on gambling losses provided in fiscal 2025. Casino revenue is up about 7% and could reach that amount.
The House-passed budget maintains the optimistic projections for lottery and casino revenue and saves general revenue in the formula by using $64.7 million in accumulated surpluses in the Blind Pension Fund as directed by the Missouri Constitution.
The Senate plan cut expectations for lottery, casino and other revenue in favor of the capitol commission funds. It restores general revenue cut in the House and leaves the Blind Pension Fund untouched.
Unlike the dispute over funding public schools, the action to reverse the House plan for higher education won bipartisan approval.
“When we go to conference, we absolutely cannot back down on this,” Nurrenbern said.
And Senate President Pro Tem Cindy O’Laughlin, a Shelbina Republican who represents Truman State University, said she would not go along with the House plan.
“The idea we would just summarily cut half of their funding seemed horrible to me and one that I would not back,” she said.
In the budget debate that extended over almost nine hours, items large and small were singled out for questioning. In the Department of Natural Resources budget, it was $2 million to buy flood-prone farmland in Jefferson County for conversion to a park.
The earmark appeared for the first time in the new version of the bill Black brought to the floor. Nurrenbern said it should have been discussed in the appropriations committee.
“This causes me a lot of consternation to see $2 million for general revenue to go to something like this,” she said.
In the Department of Agriculture, it was $20 million for moving a road at the State Fairgrounds in Sedalia, a project that has quadrupled in cost since it was first requested by Kehoe.
Black tapped interest accumulated in the money set aside for widening Interstate 70 for that project. Using those funds has the blessing of Kehoe’s office, he said.
“I wouldn’t necessarily call it a governor’s amendment, but whenever they brought this to me a week ago, they said that they would support that money coming out of that fund,” Black said.
The House tried to sweep all the accumulated interest into the general revenue fund but Black reversed that decision in the Senate budget plan.
Nurrenbern said it was an example of Republicans finding money when they supported spending while pleading poverty when other programs need money.
“When we have limited resources and we have to make tough choices,” Nurrenbern said, “it seems like these are priorities of the Republican Party to prioritize building this road in Sedalia for the State Fair versus doing investments for our people across our state.”
The final sharp debate of the evening came on how the state is using $50 million dedicated to a school voucher program called MOScholars. Eligible students can receive an amount equal to the state adequacy target to support a private education.
Senate Minority Leader Doug Beck, a Democrat from Affton, criticized State Treasurer Vivek Malek, who administers the program, for allowing data on individual voucher recipients to be posted on his office website for nearly a year while denying that such data was available.
The Independent reported on the data breach this week after informing Malek’s office the information was available and allowing him time to remove it from view.
“Why is the treasurer running this program?” Beck said. “Why is he doing this when literally has no idea what’s going on? He has not a clue how to do this and not a clue how to run this program.”
Beck said he has been seeking information for many months about whether current or former members of the General Assembly were benefiting from the program. He offered an amendment to the treasurer’s budget to deny salary payments to any elected official or state employee who does not report voucher benefits on required financial disclosure statements. The amendment was defeated.
That disclosure proposal was not as broad as Beck thinks it should be, he said.
“We should know,” Beck said, “any taxpayer who receives $7,500, or whatever the case may be, from this program. That should be disclosed.”
The Missouri Lottery offers several draw games for those aiming to win big.
Here’s a look at April 22, 2026, results for each game:
Winning Powerball numbers from April 22 drawing
24-29-32-49-63, Powerball: 11, Power Play: 2
Check Powerball payouts and previous drawings here.
Winning Pick 3 numbers from April 22 drawing
Midday: 5-0-0
Midday Wild: 2
Evening: 5-8-3
Evening Wild: 3
Check Pick 3 payouts and previous drawings here.
Winning Pick 4 numbers from April 22 drawing
Midday: 9-4-7-4
Midday Wild: 3
Evening: 5-8-6-8
Evening Wild: 1
Check Pick 4 payouts and previous drawings here.
Winning Cash Pop numbers from April 22 drawing
Early Bird: 12
Morning: 05
Matinee: 13
Prime Time: 07
Night Owl: 07
Check Cash Pop payouts and previous drawings here.
Winning Show Me Cash numbers from April 22 drawing
16-18-22-23-26
Check Show Me Cash payouts and previous drawings here.
Winning Powerball Double Play numbers from April 22 drawing
03-09-15-35-57, Powerball: 19
Check Powerball Double Play payouts and previous drawings here.
Feeling lucky? Explore the latest lottery news & results
Are you a winner? Here’s how to claim your lottery prize
All Missouri Lottery retailers can redeem prizes up to $600. For prizes over $600, winners have the option to submit their claim by mail or in person at one of Missouri Lottery’s regional offices, by appointment only.
To claim by mail, complete a Missouri Lottery winner claim form, sign your winning ticket, and include a copy of your government-issued photo ID along with a completed IRS Form W-9. Ensure your name, address, telephone number and signature are on the back of your ticket. Claims should be mailed to:
Ticket Redemption
Missouri Lottery
P.O. Box 7777
Jefferson City, MO 65102-7777
For in-person claims, visit the Missouri Lottery Headquarters in Jefferson City or one of the regional offices in Kansas City, Springfield or St. Louis. Be sure to call ahead to verify hours and check if an appointment is required.
For additional instructions or to download the claim form, visit the Missouri Lottery prize claim page.
When are the Missouri Lottery drawings held?
- Powerball: 9:59 p.m. Monday, Wednesday and Saturday.
- Mega Millions: 10 p.m. Tuesday and Friday.
- Pick 3: 12:45 p.m. (Midday) and 8:59 p.m. (Evening) daily.
- Pick 4: 12:45 p.m. (Midday) and 8:59 p.m. (Evening) daily.
- Cash4Life: 8 p.m. daily.
- Cash Pop: 8 a.m. (Early Bird), 11 a.m. (Late Morning), 3 p.m. (Matinee), 7 p.m. (Prime Time) and 11 p.m. (Night Owl) daily.
- Show Me Cash: 8:59 p.m. daily.
- Lotto: 8:59 p.m. Wednesday and Saturday.
- Powerball Double Play: 9:59 p.m. Monday, Wednesday and Saturday.
This results page was generated automatically using information from TinBu and a template written and reviewed by a Missouri editor. You can send feedback using this form.
In 1838, the governor of Missouri ordered members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to leave the area or face death. Nearly two centuries later, the church is preparing to build its third temple in the state.
The Church of Jesus Christ announced Monday that the groundbreaking ceremony for the Springfield Missouri Temple will be held on Saturday, June 6; Elder Aroldo B. Cavalcante, a General Authority Seventy and member of the church’s United States Southeast Area Presidency, will preside.
Missouri holds an important role in the early history of the Church of Jesus Christ. From 1831 to 1838, thousands of Latter-day Saints worked to “build up the land of Zion” in the state, according to the church’s overview of the Missouri historic sites. They were largely unwelcome, with several instances of mobs driving out church members from established cities.
The Church broke ground for a temple in Far West, Missouri, in the summer of 1838. However, the temple was never constructed, as early members were expelled from the state shortly thereafter. The executive order was not formally rescinded until 1976.
Late church President Russell M. Nelson announced the Springfield Missouri Temple in April 2023 general conference, making it the third in the state. A temple in St. Louis was dedicated in 1997 and one in Kansas City was dedicated in 2012.
As of April 2026, more than 84,000 Latter-day Saints live in Missouri and meet in around 180 congregations.
“Jesus Christ is the reason we build temples,” President Nelson said when announcing the Springfield temple. “Each is His holy house. Making covenants and receiving essential ordinances in the temple, as well as seeking to draw closer to Him there, will bless your life in ways no other kind of worship can.”
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