From: FGA
President Phil Ruotolo
By: Alisa Snow and Lena Juarez
The Senate was quiet this week on pari-mutuel and
VLT Legislation so we worked in the House with Jack Cory.
A News article about this week is listed below.
From the St.
Petersburg Times blog, May 03, 2007
Video lottery
dead
Cancel that
planned weekend playing the video lottery terminals at Derby Lane.
After a series of chaotic floor votes Wednesday, gambling lobbyists have thrown in the towel, and say there
won't be a vote on legalizing VLTs at 10 or more pari mutuel facilities. The
death knell came when Rep. David Rivera's fellow Republicans voted against an innocuous amendment to a lottery bill
that was to have carried the video lottery language. That vote
reflected a high level of anti-gambling sentiment in Marco Rubio's House.
In the Florida
House this week by Jack Cory:
SB1376 would allow the Department of Lottery to
create and trademark/patent new games with its name and logo. The bill sailed through the Senate on April
27 but it needed House approval before it could go to the governor to become
law.
The House companion Bill, HB 1551 had not been
heard in the Council on Government Efficiency & Accountability Chaired by
Rep. Andy Gardiner R-Orlando. Rep.
Gardiner opposed the Bill.
The House sponsor, Rep. David Rivera (R-Miami)
the Chairman of the Rules and Calendar Council, had the bill moved form the Government
Efficiency & Accountability Council to the Environmental & Natural
Resources Council and placed on a Special Council Agenda for Monday April 30th
at noon.
Rep. Mary Brandenburg (D-Lake Worth), Rep.
Richard Macheck (D-Delray), Rep. Rich Glorioso (R-Plant
City) and others sponsored your amendment
for “Equal Treatment under the Law” for all Pari-Mutuels which would include purse
enhancement and purse protection for you.
The sponsor asked us to withdraw the amendment
and promised to work with us before the bill got to the Floor. This is a normal
procedure.
We tried to work with the Tracks on Tuesday on a
compromise. They offered contract negotiation but with the local associations, not
the FGA. I consulted with Phil and many
of you and was told that that was not acceptable.
I informed the Tracks but they did not come back
with a counter offer. Instead they began
telling the Legislative Members that we were being unreasonable because, I
guess, we did not do it their way.
They continued to work late into the night on
Tuesday and finally told the sponsor and some other Legislative Leaders that
they had 64 Members of the House committed to vote for the Lottery Bill with
the VLT amendment but without Purse protection for you.
So on Wednesday morning, day 58 of the
Legislative Session, I contacted Phil and it was decided that we could not wait
any longer for the Tracks to compromise. Therefore it was decided that we
should oppose any bill that had a VLT amendment that did not have purse
enhancement and purse protection for you.
The sponsor
of the Lottery Bill and the Greyhound Tracks saw fit to try to amend SB 1376
which emerged as the only bill for the tracks to use for their VLT language.
SB 1376 was the first bill on the Special Order
Calendar for Wednesday (May 3). I
anticipated the tracks to try to get the bad VLT amendment on this bill and
send it to the Senate.
Rep. Thad Altman (R- Melbourne), Rep. Ron Reagan (R-Sarasota),
Rep. Charlie Dean (R-Inverness) and Rep. Joyce Cusack (D-Deland) filed your
Equal Treatment under the Law for all pari-mutuels amendment.
If you
are in the District of any of these Legislative Members please call AND write a
thank you note to them for trying to help you!!
Since no one offered the VLT amendment, our
amendment was withdrawn.
The House sponsor of the Lottery Bill then
offered two other amendments. Each amendment was written slightly differently,
to give enforcement rights to the Department of Lottery. We believe this was an
attempt to bounce the Bill; in another word send it back to the Senate, so that
the Senate could put the bad VLT amendment on it and send it back to the House very
late in the Session.
The first amendment died on a 57-57 tie vote and
the second one, after much debate, was killed overwhelmingly by
a 48-69 vote. The sponsor of the bill then asked that the bill be temporally
postponed.
The tracks’ lobbyists spent the rest of the week
trying to revive the issue and convince House members to reconsider their
votes. They discussed several approaches – expanding the amendment so that VLTs
would be put in all tracks, not just those in large counties. There was also an
attempt to give Hialeah Horse Track the ability to reactivate its pari-mutuel
license.
In the end, between the anti-gambling sentiment
in the House and the disgust with the process the Track Lobbyists were
employing had grown to the point that members of the House didn’t want to
discuss the issue any longer.
The Department of Lottery Bill was one of the
last pieces of legislation voted on, but it did not have the Florida Greyhound
Tracks BAD VLT language.
The FGA/NGA
will continue to seek legislation on behalf of ALL Florida and National Breeders, Owners and Kennel Operators
that will protect your purses in the Florida Statue.
