County leaders drop plan for slots
at Miami International Airport

By Michael Vasquez
© 2010 Miami Herald
Friday, January 22, 2010

With legal costs mounting and state lawmakers frowning, Miami-Dade County commissioners on Thursday decided that their long-shot bid to install airport slot machines was no longer a gamble worth taking. ``The die has been cast,'' Commissioner Dorrin Rolle said. ``I just don't think we should spend dollars that we don't have on a battle I don't think we're going to win.''

By an 8-2 vote, commissioners abandoned their controversial push to bring slots to financially strapped Miami International Airport. Slots alone would never have been enough to fix MIA's money woes, but county officials estimated that the machines -- placed beyond security checkpoints -- could have raked in $17 million or more per year.

``We're just trying to explore every option,'' County Manager George Burgess said.

WEAKENED BID

But a recent denial by the state agency that awards gambling permits left the county's slots application significantly weakened, and it had never been that strong to start with.

Had MIA been given approval by Florida's Division of Pari-Mutuel Wagering, the airport would still have needed to rely on a legal loophole to obtain its coveted slots. The county hoped to take advantage of a state law that could allow horse tracks like Hialeah Park to add slots -- the law was never meant to apply to airports.

The plan: MIA would obtain a quarter-horse racing permit, then use that permit to qualify for slots. To keep the slots legal, the airport would have to run horse races, but county officials hoped to satisfy this requirement by leasing space at an existing nearby horse track -- preventing the strange sight of horses trotting on airport grounds.

But if a lease deal couldn't be arranged, the horse races would have had to happen on airport property. State regulators were skeptical of the airport site, and that skepticism was one of several reasons they rejected MIA's slots application last month. The county's in-house legal team quickly filed an appeal, but on Thursday commissioners made it clear they want the appeal dropped.

OPPOSITION

A key reason: strong opposition from state lawmakers in Tallahassee, opposition that could derail the slots proposal even if the legal appeal were successful.

County Commissioner Rebeca Sosa, an opponent of the slots idea, cited a talking-points e-mail circulated among top House Republicans in the Legislature last week. The e-mail was strongly critical of MIA's slot-machine ambitions. ``The Miami International Airport is for planes, not horses, cards or slots,'' the e-mail stated.

Some commissioners openly wondered Thursday if keeping the slots fight alive could alienate key state lawmakers whose support the county will need on more important issues. To date, the county has paid $37,000 to an outside expert hired to assist in drafting the slots application.

``In these economic times, we have already spent $37,000 on something that is not in our hands, it's in the hands of Tallahassee,'' Sosa said.