Florida House raises legitimate
constitutional question in gambling lawsuit

An Editorial
South Florida Sun-Sentinel Editorial Board
Copyright © 2007, South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Friday, December 14, 2007

ISSUE: House sues over gambling compact.

With state coffers shortchanged, Gov. Charlie Crist was smart to negotiate a gambling compact with the Seminole Tribe. The wisdom of that effort, however, doesn't negate the need for a proper vetting of the deal.

House leaders now suing the governor are asking a valid legal question that Florida's Supreme Court needs to answer. Can the governor sign such compacts without the consent of or review by the Legislature?

It's up to the justices to sort this one out, but the lawsuit points to an existing void in the checks and balances system.

At the federal level, for example, it's the executive branch that negotiates treaties, which must then be ratified by the Senate. If Florida's system of government does not require legislative review, then the governor would be granted de facto sovereign powers, as argued in the lawsuit filed by the House and Speaker Marco Rubio.

That seems ill-advised, particularly on an issue as important as gambling.

A compact makes economic sense. But it needs review by another branch of government to make sure it is the best deal Florida can strike, and that it meets the letter of the law.

That said, part of the reason this compact is getting mired in lawsuits is because legislative leaders for years have stalled the inevitable. They have unwisely opposed such a deal largely on moral grounds, even as the casinos and gambling industry flourished.

We are now paying for that inaction. It is understandable Gov. Crist would want to circumvent legislative leaders who have shown a propensity to roadblock rather than assist.

The Legislature's failure, however, doesn't override the advisability of bringing this dispute before Florida's highest court. House leaders have raised a legitimate constitutional question.

If they should prevail, however, they must act in accordance with their role as public policy stewards, and not simply to lob grenades at a leisure activity they find distasteful.

BOTTOM LINE: It's fair constitutional question.

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House panel gives its spin on games at adult arcades

By Mary Ellen Klas
Miami Herald Tallahassee Bureau
© 2007 Miami Herald
Friday, December 14, 2007

Are video slot machines that pay out with gift cards at mom-and-pop arcades illegal gambling that should be shut down, or are they games of skill that can be regulated?

That is the question the House Business Regulation Committee tackled Thursday as it heard testimony that the proliferation of the ''gray market'' games at penny-ante game rooms confuses law enforcement and opens the door for money laundering and fraud.

The committee's chairman, Rep. Carlos Lopez-Cantera, said he wants illegally operated machines closed down and the state laws clarified to regulate the rest. ''I don't want anyone to think this is a witch hunt,'' said the Miami Republican. ``This is an industry that a lot of seniors attend, and it has no regulation.''

Jennifer Pritt, a Florida Department of Law Enforcement agent, told the committee that her agency's experience with the machines that have been cropping up in strip malls and low-income neighborhoods across the state is ``they are operated without rules, regulations or industry norms.''

State law is murky as to whether the video-style machines that look like slot machines qualify as games of chance -- like slot machines at Indian casinos and some racetracks -- or games of skill, like arcade amusement games, she said, so law enforcement around the state ''is struggling.'' Some operators have been arrested for running gambling rooms, while others have gone unchecked.

''If it is your intent to allow these machines, then the machines and those holding the facilities should be licensed, regulated, inspected and treated to the same regulation control as slot machines in Florida,'' Pritt said.

CHUCK E. CHEESE

For 20 years, adult arcades have operated apart from the state's gambling laws under the so-called Chuck E. Cheese exemption, which allows coin games as long as a skilled player can manipulate the outcome. But with the rise of gaming technology, the new games look like slot machines.

Operators of the games say they look alike but operate differently.

Gale Fontaine runs four arcades in Pompano and West Palm Beach and is president of the Florida Arcade and Bingo Association. A typical arcade, she said, offers games that look like electronic slot machines but rather than games of chance, where the machine determines the winning, they are games of skill, because the player can stop the spinning to get three cherries, lemons or bars with a device known as a ``skill stop.''

''You stop the machine and you can hold two like symbols and try and catch the third symbol and your chances of winning definitely increase,'' she said.

`PLAY FOR PENNIES'

Her long-time patrons, many of them elderly and widowed, come daily to her arcades, where they are greeted in the morning with free bagels, danish and coffee and given a free hot lunch at noon. In between, they play the machines for hours, wagering one to eight cents a play.

''These people call it their job and it's their home away from home,'' she said. But, she added, ``they're never leaving in a higher income-tax bracket and they're never leaving in a lower income-tax bracket either. They play for pennies.''

`GAMBLING MACHINES'

Opponents, however, consider the machines games of chance that violate state law because they often pay out with gift cards. Arcade games are limited to prizes worth no more than 75 cents, but the gift cards, often especially made for arcade customers by Publix or Wal-Mart, are often worth $25 or more.

''These are gambling machines,'' said Kurt Jones, an undercover detective with the Jacksonville Sheriff's Department who posed as someone ''who wanted to get into the slot machine business'' and secretly tape recorded his conversations with arcade operators.

''Each person referred to it as the gambling business,'' he said. ``They told us how to target lower middle-income and elderly people and what part of town to put it in to get the best money.''

Fontaine, president of the Florida Arcade Association, said her group ''welcomes regulation'' to get rid of the ''bad operators.'' But she worries that the talk of regulation this year is a back-door attempt by the parimutuel industry to shut them down in the face of new competition from Seminole Tribe casinos.

State Sen. Jeremy Ring, a Margate Democrat, is already drafting a bill to create a super-agency to regulate all gambling, parimutuel wagering and even the state-run lottery. He said Thursday he will tuck these so-called mom-and-pop shops and adult arcades into it ``because they need to be regulated.''

`GOING TO GET NASTY'

A sign that the parimutuel industry is paying attention: The committee room was filled with industry lobbyists.

''I don't want to get into the issue of one industry versus another,'' Lopez-Cantera warned lobbyists as they spoke.

But the lines have already been drawn. ''This is going to get nasty,'' said a lobbyist for the Seminole Tribe.