The Florida Supreme Court recently held a nearly hour-long hearing regarding whether Gretna Racing in Gadsden County can add slot machines. County voters approved a referendum in 2012 authorizing slots there. The case could have statewide implications since voters in Lee, Brevard, Palm Beach, Hamilton and Washington counties have approved similar referendums. Currently slots are limited to south Florida tracks and Seminole Tribe of Florida casinos.
The justices did not say when they will rule on the case, which hinges on the 2009 expansion of a 2004 voter-approved constitutional amendment authorizing slots at seven existing horse and dog tracks and jai-alai frontons in Broward and Miami-Dade counties. The legislature approved the 2009 change to allow Hialeah Park to be eligible for a slots license.
During the hearing, lawyers for the track and the state argued over grammar and sentence construction to the point where one justice stated, “This whole thing makes no sense.”
Representing Creek Entertainment Gretna, consisting of the Poarch Creek Indians and investors who own the Gretna racetrack, attorney Marc Dunbar, who is one of the investors, argued the change in the law cleared the way for counties to consider allowing slot machines. “This is likely the easiest case you’re going to deal with today. It will turn on the interpretation of a single word: after. You apply the words and their logical consequence is that Gadsden County had a referendum and entitled Gretna Racing for slot machines,” Dunbar said. The track opened December 2011 and offers flat track horseracing, poker rooms and off-track betting.
However, Deputy Solicitor General Jonathan Williams said, “The legislature did not intend to legalize slot machines statewide” when it changed the law. The 2009 law allows counties outside Miami-Dade and Broward to legalize slot machines only if the legislature or a constitutional amendment gives them permission, he said, and Gretna had neither.
Williams said allowing slots in the rest of the state would have jeopardized the now-expired compact with the Seminoles, who have exclusive rights to offer slots outside South Florida and banked card games, in exchange for paying the state $120 million annually.
Gretna Racing sued the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation after the state agency denied its application to install slot machines. The regulators said state Attorney General Pam Bondi had issued a legal opinion that slots only were allowed at tracks in Broward and Miami-Dade counties, based on a 2004 constitutional amendment that authorized slot machines in those two counties.
Justice Barbara Pariente asked Dunbar why lawmakers would authorize slot machines at parimutuel facilities in Miami-Dade and Broward, but not specifically authorize them anywhere else. She said, “To basically say to 65 other counties you just have to have a referendum and, if you’re a home rule county, you’re fine. This would have been a very, very significant expansion of slot machines and there is nary a mention in the legislative record of this kind of change.”
Pariente also took issue with the state’s arguments that the lawmakers’ language did not authorize counties to do anything. “If it’s creating this false sense that other counties can do this, why would it be in there? It just seems bizarre that that would be what the legislature intended,” she said.
Justice R. Fred Lewis said, “If we said that it’s an eligible facility, but you can’t get a license, this whole thing makes no sense. Don’t we have to make some common sense with this whole thing that we’re faced with?”
Former state Senator Dan Gelber, who was in office when the law passed, said the legislature absolutely was only dealing with Dade and Broward counties. “That’s what they were dealing with. Nobody was standing up and having a debate about 65 other counties. If that had happened, I know a couple of my colleagues’ heads would have exploded,” he said.
State Senator Bill Galvano also said, “It was not the intent of the legislature to open the door for counties to hold their own referendums to allow the expansion of slots.” Galvano said when the change to the law was being drafted, no one was “advocating for the independent ability of counties to expand based on referendum without legislative approval.”
But state Rep. Alan Williams, a supporter of Gretna Racing, said he voted for the change so counties could bring slot machines to their pari-mutuels. “Our intent was never to hamstring the counties and tell them what they could not do,” he said.
