So-called ‘skill games’ are concentrated in poor Philly neighborhoods. Local leaders don’t want it to be the only funding stream for mass transit.

Community leaders and lawmakers in North and West Philadelphia have deep reservations about funding SEPTA with revenue from a proposed tax on “skill games,” the long-unregulated gaming devices prevalent in their neighborhoods.

The city’s poorest residents, who are most affected by the machines, shouldn’t bear the brunt of the cost to save public transit, said Jacqueline Brodie-Davis, a block captain who has lived in West Philadelphia for 25 years and seen the machines multiply.

“It’s not good for the community. It’s not good for our people,” Brodie-Davis said of the concentration of skill games that have proliferated in corner stores, gas stations, and bars around her neighborhood.

But skill games offer one of few new revenue streams that Senate Republicans have shown interest in using to fund SEPTA and other public transit systems in the state, bucking Democrats’ other funding proposals such as the legalization and taxation of recreational marijuana.

As talks about how to tax the games advance and shape ongoing budget negotiations, a 2025 report generated in Philadelphia’s City Hall has circulated in Harrisburg among lawmakers from the city. The report found the unregulated and untaxed gaming devices heavily concentrated in neighborhoods with lower incomes, higher unemployment, and more gun violence.

Just 3% of Philadelphia’s businesses in wealthier neighborhoods have skill game machines, while 50% of businesses in poorer neighborhoods have them, according to the report.

“Several of my constituents, communities, and corner stores have been riddled with bullets from robberies and things going wrong, all centered around skill games,” said Rep. Amen Brown, a Democrat representing parts of West Philadelphia.

Skill games have operated in a legal gray area in Pennsylvania for more than a decade, with a case on their lawfulness now before the state Supreme Court. Democratic Mayor Cherelle L. Parker signed a citywide ban on skill games in February 2024, arguing that the machines incentivized violent crime. A Commonwealth Court lifted the ban in December.

Parker declined to comment on the prospect of using revenue from the machines to fund public transit.

The state budget, which was due June 30, is particularly challenging this year as Pennsylvania faces a significant budget shortfall and is set to spend $5.5 billion more than it brings in this fiscal year. Top lawmakers and Shapiro continue to meet behind closed doors to negotiate a deal, but SEPTA plans to implement its service cuts on Aug. 24 if they don’t get assurances of additional state funding by Thursday.

The anticipated multibillion-dollar budget shortfall has left the state seeking new ways to generate additional revenue to fund programs from transit to healthcare.

In his budget pitch, Shapiro proposed shoring up the funds with a 52% tax on skill games, estimating that it would generate $369 million in its first year, as one way to cover the budget deficit. He also proposed legalizing and taxing recreational marijuana, which Senate GOP leaders have since shot down.

Skill games have since emerged as the state’s only potential source for generating extra revenue that both parties may agree upon.

Yet advocates and lawmakers in Philadelphia such as Brown worry that tying skill games revenue to transit funding could lead to an increased presence of the machines and, subsequently, more violent crime in their vicinities.

Police districts with higher shooting rates commonly have more skill game machines, according to city findings. Between 2021 and 2023, five homicides, 20 shootings, and 43 drug arrests occurred within 800 feet of the entrances to three “nuisance businesses” on one block of Frankford Avenue, according to the Philadelphia Police Department.

At a 2023 City Council hearing over legislation to ban skill games in Philadelphia except in casinos or bars, Deputy Police Commissioner Francis Healy called the machines “a magnet for nuisance and criminal activity.”

Brown, who helped author legislation on banning skill games in the city, said the machines are “taking over communities block by block.”

Brown has suggested possible regulations such as requiring security officers and creating a separate section in stores where people could have access to the games.

Brodie-Davis, the West Philadelphia block captain, is scared to enter the shops by her house because of the violent environment the skill games have created, she said. Instead, she does her shopping at the ShopRite grocery store on 52nd Street near Parkside Avenue, a 20-minute SEPTA bus ride away.

In Kensington, the games can feel easier to find than fresh produce, said Nicole Moy, an artist and Kensington advisory committee member.

On a recent Wednesday inside C&L Supermarket and Wholesale on Kensington Avenue, a basket of expired potatoes flanked four glowing skill game machines. On the same street, a red-and-white signpost warned of discontinued service for SEPTA’s 3 bus.

“It’s pivotal to fund SEPTA. I just think that it shouldn’t be on the backs of the community,” Moy said.

Senate Republicans have historically been resistant to additional public transit funding because they are wary of spending, especially on an agency that some argue has taken funds that other areas of the state need.

Without any additional state funding, SEPTA has said it plans to address its $213 million annual structural deficit by raising fares more than 20% and cutting almost half of its services, beginning Aug. 24.

The Democratic-controlled state House passed a transit spending bill again for a fifth time on Monday, which aligned with Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro’s pitch to increase the amount of sales-tax revenue allocated to transit and added Senate GOP language to increase state oversight of SEPTA and Pittsburgh Regional Transit.

Shapiro had proposed giving public transit an additional $292 million, including $165 million for SEPTA, in his February budget pitch. Shapiro has called funding SEPTA and other transit systems “vital.” He also encouraged Philadelphians last week to urge their state senators — including the city’s sole Republican senator, State Sen. Joe Picozzi — to support statewide transit funding.

When asked whether skill games should be considered as a funding mechanism for transit, Democratic Sen. Vincent Hughes (D., Philadelphia) said the best policy would incorporate the transit spending bill passed by the House in June, but “if there’s other ideas that people might have, we need to get them in the conversation so that they can be implemented” before SEPTA’s Aug. 14 deadline.