RICHMOND, Va. (WRIC) -- The future of skill games in Virginia is now in the hands of Governor Abigail Spanberger. The General Assembly sent a bill to Spanberger that would legalize up to 25,000 skill game machines in Virginia.  “It’s at the top of our priorities to make sure that our small bu sinesses in our community thrive,” Delegate Cliff Hayes (D-Chesapeake) told 8News.  The bill would limit the number of machines certain businesses can have. For example, convenience stores would be able to have a maximum of three machines, while restaurants could have four. All players would need to be at least 21 years of age.  Hayes, who helped find consensus among lawmakers on the skill games issue, said with about 90,000 untaxed, unregulated, illegal, non-skill, gaming machines currently in Virginia, the bill is about cleaning up an illicit market and helping small businesses.  “These illegal machines in our convenience stores, those machines are games of chance, where your ability has no calculation, no involvement in your opportunity to be successful,” Hayes told 8News.  However, Ray Clemons, President of the Fraternal Order of Police of Virginia, said the state shouldn’t help an industry that he says has been operating illegally in Virginia for years.  “When you violate the law, there’s consequences for violating the law, you should not be rewarded with, we’re gonna forget about all the violations of law that you had, and we’re just gonna to go ahead and make this legal now,” Clemons said. Clemons added that the games present a public safety problem.  “They draw in a certain element because people know that there are people in there playing on these games and they have money to spend,” Clemons told 8News.  The bill gives localities the option to opt out of having skill games via a voter referendum.  ...read more read less