In late 2015, Florida Governor Rick Scott negotiated a gaming compact with the Seminole Tribe of Florida guaranteeing it exclusive rights to offer blackjack in exchange for billion over seven years. Lawmakers failed to approve the agreement as it got overloaded with other issues. Under the existing deal with the Seminoles, the state has received nearly billion since 2010.
In the current legislative session, Senate Bill 8 and House Bill 7037 offer competing visions of gambling in Florida, with the Senate allowing gambling expansion and the House seeking to freeze it. Senate bill sponsor Bill Galvano said, “Inaction is not a choice.’’
The Senate bill would allow slot machines at racetracks in several counties outside of South Florida, but would permit the Seminole Tribe to add craps and roulette at its casinos. Also, decoupling would allow racetrack owners to offer gambling and drop live racing.
In one example, the House bill bans designated-player card games, in which players play against each other, but the Senate version allows “all cardroom operators to offer designated-player games.” In addition, the House legislation prohibits slot expansion, while the Senate expands the slot availability, including in counties where voters passed referendums allowing it. Furthermore, the House measure would let the Seminoles keep blackjack and slots at its casinos for 20 years and direct Seminole revenue sharing funds to education, to be used for teacher recruitment and retention in K-12 and higher education institutions and for schools for underserved students.
Neither bill addresses establishes an independent gambling commission. Currently, the Department of Business and Professional Regulation oversees gambling.
Pending lawsuits also could have an impact on gambling legislation. In one case, the Florida Supreme Court could allow dog and horse tracks in eight counties to add slot machines. In another legal battle, the Seminoles and the state have sued each other regarding the tribe’s blackjack exclusivity, under a compact provision that expired in 2015.
Izzy Havenick, who with his family owns Naples Fort Myers Greyhound Racing in Bonita Springs, said he’s once again “cautiously optimistic” some gambling legislation will pass this year. “It’s hard to be in an industry where you never know what your rules and regulations are going to be. We hope they pass legislation that allows us to compete with the gambling that is all around us,” said Havenick, whose venue offer poker but competes with the Seminole Immokalee Casino, which offers slots. The racetrack is located in Lee County that passed a referendum to allow slots.
John Sowinski, president of No Casinos, said, “The Florida Senate is setting up a buffet of glutinous proportions. Proposed legislation calls for the biggest expansion of gambling in Florida’s history. It literally would recreate our state in Nevada’s image, with casinos popping up in communities from the far reaches of the Panhandle to the end of the Everglades.”
He explained casinos would open in Broward and Miami-Dade counties, “a region already suffering from a glut of casinos. There would be a massive increase in gambling supply there, without a corresponding increase in gamblers, creating a dynamic in which the casinos could only survive by cannibalizing each other’s customers. Even the gambling industry’s own financial experts predict that 95 percent of the patrons would be locals, not tourists.” Sowinski added, “But the Senate bill does not stop with more gambling in South Florida. Initially, casinos would spread to eight other counties. That only would be for starters because under Senate Bill 8, every horse track, dog track or jai alai fronton could become a casino.”
However, Sowinski said the House has “put forth a bill that fixes weaknesses in existing gambling law, closes loopholes that gambling lawyers continually exploit, stops the proliferation of slot machines throughout Florida, honors Florida’s constitutional restrictions on gambling and respects the will of the people of Florida, who have consistently rejected statewide expansions of gambling. Finally, it provides for an agreement with the Seminole tribe that would achieve the stated intent of the original Seminole compact: holding the line on gambling and creating a firewall to stop the spread of casinos throughout Florida.”
But Seminole Tribal Council Chairman Marcellus Osceola recently wrote in a letter to Scott, Senate President Joe Negron and House Speaker Richard Corcoran, “We have concluded that neither the Senate or House proposals make economic sense for the tribe.” He said both bills require the tribe to increase its revenue share to the state while decreasing its exclusivity for some games, which would violate the federal Indian Gaming Regulatory Act. That was spelled out in a June 2016 letter from the tribe to the Department of Interior when legislators proposed similar gaming legislation instead of agreeing to the negotiated compact.
Director of the Office of Indian Gaming Paula Hart wrote, “We are concerned that the bills may violate IGRA’s prohibition against taxing tribal gaming revenue and the department’s long-standing revenue sharing policy. We would be hard-pressed to envision a scenario where we could lawfully approve or otherwise allow a compact to go into effect that calls for increased revenue sharing and reductions in existing exclusivity.”
Osceola wrote, “Unfortunately, both the Senate and House bills would require dramatic increases in the tribe’s payments without providing increases in the tribe’s exclusivity sufficient to justify those higher payments. The Senate bill would require the same higher payments, including a guarantee, that were proposed in the 2015 compact, but would add numerous additional exceptions to the tribe’s exclusivity while broadly expanding gaming in Florida.” He added the tribe is “willing to meet” with Scott and legislators “to work out a mutually beneficial agreement.”
Another provision of Senate Bill 8 could potentially ban advance-deposit wagering via phone or online. ADW is allowed under federal law but states can choose to allow it or not; currently it is allowed in Florida. Racing industry leaders agree the state only wants to tax ADW outlets in Florida. However, they say the bill’s language would make it a third-degree felony for accepting wagers on horse races besides those made within the enclosure of a parimutuel facility in the state and through a facility’s on-track tote system.
Supporters said licensing and taxing the state’s ADW handle could generate about $1.5 million for the industry and the state. A corresponding bill in the House does not include the questionable language.
