Agreement close on gambling deal;
Palm Beach slots a sticking point

By Mary Ellen Klas
Miami Herald/St. Petersburg Times Bureau
© 2009 St. Petersburg Times/The Miami Herald
Wednesday, March 24, 2010

The House awaits a response from the Seminoles on the last, and most contentious, issue left in gambling negotiations on a compact, Rep. Bill Galvano, the House's chief negotiator, said Wednesday.

While a conceptual agreement has been reached, he said, the definition of what will constitute exclusivity for the tribe remains to be determined.

"We've been through regulation; we've been through timing; we've been through finance -- all that stuff,'' he said. Now, they await word on whether the tribe will agree to the House's language that would allow the parimutuels outside Miami Dade and Broward to install electronic machines based on video bingo technology and featuring historic racing games.

While the House has been the lead negotiator, the Senate is engaged, and the priority for Senate leaders, the sources say: bringing slot machines to Palm Beach County. They want a carve out that allows county voters to approve future games without undermining the revenue sharing provisions of the compact.

The tribe had agreed to allow 300 video bingo and historic racing machines at each of the state's horse and dog track and jai alai frontons, as long as they were required to operate with some time lag between the games -- a feature not offered by the existing machines. The House countered, allowing each parimutuel either 500 machines that operate like the machines now available at racetracks in Arkansas, or 1,000 machines made specially to fit the Seminoles' definition. "Whether they get authorized is a separate issue,'' Galvano said. The House, however, is "not teed up to authorize games" while the Senate is willing to authorize them.