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Gov. Abigail Spanberger has vetoed Senate Bill 661, legislation that would have legalized skill games in Virginia, drawing immediate praise from Alexandria City Councilman Canek Aguirre, who had been sounding the alarm on the machines since his first term in office.
"I applaud and thank Governor Spanberger for her veto of Senate Bill 661," Aguirre said in a press release on Saturday. "Skill games are predatory and consistently placed in lower-income neighborhoods. You never saw these machines going into country clubs or boutique spas and there's a reason why."
In her veto statement, Spanberger cited the rapid expansion of gaming in Virginia over the last decade and the state's lack of a centralized, independent regulatory body to oversee it. She warned that passing SB661 would introduce thousands more machines into communities without a comprehensive regulatory structure in place.
"The absence of a centralized regulatory authority for gaming creates gaps in oversight that threaten the Commonwealth of Virginia's ability to provide consistent enforcement, prevent illicit activity, and protect all consumers," Spanberger said.
The governor also pointed to data collected by the Virginia Alcoholic Beverage Control Authority during the window between 2020 and 2021 when skill games were temporarily legal in the state. That data showed the machines were disproportionately concentrated in communities with higher rates of poverty, lower educational attainment, and higher percentages of Black and Hispanic residents. The data also captured millions of dollars in wagers flowing out of those communities during that period.
Spanberger also noted that legalizing the machines now would effectively reward operators who had knowingly flouted state law for years, calling it "a troubling precedent for how business is conducted in Virginia."
The veto came one day after Spanberger vetoed separate legislation that would have required Fairfax County's board of supervisors to hold a referendum on a casino in Tysons Corner. In February, her administration had also expressed support for a single dedicated entity to regulate all legalized gaming in Virginia during testimony before the ABC/Gaming Subcommittee.
Aguirre had been vocal in his opposition to SB661 long before the veto. In January, he sent a letter to the Virginia Senate General Laws and Technology Subcommittee opposing the bill on behalf of the City of Alexandria, in which he recounted the experience of a small business owner in the Arlandria-Chirilagua neighborhood who was misled by a third-party operator into believing the machines were lawful.
The business owner was ultimately charged with crimes for possessing machines he believed were legal. He faced criminal charges, fines, forfeiture of the machines and loss of associated cash — consequences that fell entirely on him and his family, not on the operator or distributor who had misled him.
That pattern played out publicly in Alexandria last year. In July 2025, a Multijurisdictional Grand Jury indicted two business owners — Oscar Salinas, 57, of Arlington, and Michelle Kim, 53, of Maryland — each on one count of possessing an illegal gambling device. Salinas operated a business in the 3800 block of Mt. Vernon Avenue, in the heart of the Arlandria-Chirilagua neighborhood; Kim operated one in the 200 block of S. Van Dorn Street. Both had previously received warning letters from Alexandria police advising them that the devices were illegal. Both were charged as misdemeanants, facing up to 12 months in jail and fines of up to $2,500.
The Alexandria Police Department's Vice/Narcotics Section led the investigation. Notably, no charges were brought against any of the third-party operators or distributors who placed the machines in either business.
In his January letter, Aguirre argued the dynamic was not a fluke but a structural problem with how skill games operate.
"Skill games are not the lifeline some small businesses think they are," he wrote. "They are a trap, especially in working-class and immigrant communities, shifting risk onto our neighbors who can least afford it."
