Negotitators meet on compact but no deal yet

By Mary Ellen Klas
Times/Herald Tallahassee Bureau
The Buzz - Florida Politics
© 2009 St. Petersburg Times/Miami Hearld
Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Lawyers for Gov. Charlie Crist and the Seminole Tribe of Florida met again on Monday to come a resolution over how to meet the tribe's desire for additional casino games and the legislatures' demand for a reduction in the games they now offer.

The major sticking point remains, however, said George LeMieux, Crist's former chief of staff who has been involved in the negotiations with the tribe: exclusivity. The tribe has agreed to pay the state annual revenue sharing payments as long as it gets the exclusive right to blackjack and bacarrat and slot machines at its casinios outside of Broward County. The legislature however, wants to leave open the possibility that some of those games can spring up in other parts of the state and wants the tribe to remove its card games from its casino in Immokalee?

"Not everyone is going to get everything they like,'' LeMieux said Tuesday. "There has to be some compromise."

Despite the insistence that legislators ordered a take-it-or-leave-it deal, LeMieux said that he spoke again to legislative leaders on Tuesday and they are "operating in good faith" and are hoping to come to an agreement by the Aug. 31 deadline imposed in the law.