Last week, state lawmakers ended their annual session without crafting rules to oversee Broward County's slot machines. Now county commissioners are talking about stepping in and writing their own regulations. But it's not clear whether commissioners have that authority.
Meanwhile, the clock is ticking. The constitutional slot-machine amendment, approved by voters last year, gave legislators until July 1 to create regulations to implement slot machines at Dania Jai-Alai, Gulfstream Park, Hollywood Greyhound Track and Pompano Park harness track.
With no regulations in place to implement the amendment, track owners say they will seek a court order allowing them to start writing them.
Parimutuel industry officials are expected to file a lawsuit soon. They concede the court has three options: require that the issue be decided by the Legislature; allow the industry to operate without state action; or impose its own guidelines until lawmakers act.
Broward County's operating agreement with the coalition of gambling-site owners allows the county to draft its own regulations. Those might include the type and number of machines and the hours of operation, but the county is barred from imposing a tax on the industry.
Broward Commissioner Ilene Lieberman said Tuesday she wants the issue added to next week's commission agenda, but questions remain over whether any local laws might prevail.
''The chances of it ever kicking in range somewhere between zero and nonexistent,'' said Sen. Steve Geller, the Hallandale Beach Democrat involved in the failed effort to write a slots bill.
Lieberman suggested that the county should research whether Broward County schools may be entitled to keep all the profits the industry has pledged to go to education -- 30 percent -- rather than distribute the money among all 67 counties as promised during the campaign.
The constitutional language that enabled slot machines says lawmakers ''shall adopt legislation implementing'' the amendment. So the prospect of Broward County filling the breach set off a fierce reaction from legislators and industry officials.
Rep. Randy Johnson, the Celebration Republican who headed the No Casinos effort to the defeat the amendment, said if Broward drafts its own ordinance he will recommend the Legislature file suit to challenge it.
''This is clearly an intrusion on the powers of the Legislature, and I think it's a power that the Legislature will jealously guard,'' Johnson said.
A state attorney general's opinion sought by Johnson earlier this year concluded that the amendment required legislative action before it could take effect.
Attorneys for the state Senate and constitutional scholars have come to the opposite conclusion, said Sen. Dennis Jones, the Seminole Republican who led the effort to get the slots bill passed in the Senate.
''It's going to have to be one of those things that's going to have to go to court to find out,'' Jones said.
Gov. Jeb Bush speculated Monday that lawmakers may have to come back into a special session to finish their work.
''Perhaps the courts will say we have to come back and do it,'' he said. Until then, he said, his office will continue working with lawmakers to reach consensus.
Industry lobbyist Ron Book said there are limits on what the county can regulate. The constitutional amendment approved by voters delegated the authority to regulate the facilities to the Legislature -- not the county.
Broward County can't regulate the type or number of machines, but might be able to dictate hours of operation, Book said.
''The industry would like a special session, get it regulated and move on,'' he said.
Since the Legislature didn't act, the parimutuel sites have the right to operate slots, and would support ''responsible regulation,'' Book said.
Deputy County Attorney Larry Lymas-Johnson said he is waiting for direction from the County Commission regarding what type of regulations he should research. There is nothing in the constitutional amendment that states the county can't regulate the type and number of slot machines, he said.
Inept political hacks not in a gambling mood
By Fred Grimm
Columnist
fgrimm@herald.com
© 2005 Miami Herald
Thursday, May 12, 2005
So the Legislature punted on slots.
Our lawmakers dodged their constitutional duty, specified in the amendment Florida citizens approved last fall by an 82,000-vote margin:
``In the next regular legislative session occurring after voter approval of this constitutional amendment, the Legislature shall adopt legislation implementing this section and having an effective date no later than July 1 of the year following voter approval of this amendment.''
Didn't happen. That next regular legislative session came and went. The key commandment of the amendment was relegated to an empty shell, or, rather, an empty shall. Among Florida legislators, the word ''shall'' no longer comes with the burdensome definition of an order, an obligation or an inevitability.
The session produced none of the rules the amendment demanded before the installation of slot machines in Broward County's parimutuel sites. No licensing procedures. No state agency assigned to regulate slots. No regulations to regulate, for that matter. And no way to make sure, as the amendment specifies, that ``any such taxes supplement public education funding statewide.''
ONE BIG ZIP
Nothing, nothing, nothing. Local folks were stunned to discover that Tallahassee regards a constitutional mandate with the same gravity movie stars lend to marriage vows.
Me? I'm shocked, shocked to find that there's no gambling legislation coming out of Tallahassee.
Inconvenient passages of the Florida Constitution and state law are flouted like a high school dress code. No matter if 65 percent of the voters say yes as they did with the 1996 initiative: ``Those in the Everglades Agricultural Area who cause water pollution within the Everglades Protection Area or the Everglades Agricultural Area shall be primarily responsible for paying the costs of the abatement of that pollution.''
All it took was a little fairy dust cast about by sugar industry lobbyists and it was as if lawmakers never heard of the polluter-pays amendment. Instead, it was decided that homeowners in the South Florida Water Management District would be taxed to clean up Big Sugar's mess.
Does anyone suppose the legislation approved this spring establishing a low-rent statewide pre-K education program much resembles the ''high quality'' program up to ''professionally accepted standards'' mandated by the voters in 2002?
For years, Broward Public Defender Howard Finkelstein has railed about the state's failure to obey its own Mental Health Act.
The act codifies fine sentiments about the proper, dignified, civilized treatment of the mentally ill, particularly those snared in the criminal justice system.
The law, however, is a stunning contrast to the appalling conditions in which the mentally ill languish in county jails and state lock-ups.
ONLY A SUGGESTION?
''It doesn't really matter in Florida if it's a law or a voter initiative,'' Finkelstein said Wednesday, noting how the Legislature had danced around the class size amendment and the now-dead bullet train initiative. ``There's an attitude here that the law is is merely a suggestion.''
So the Legislature punted on slots. But while they've dithered, the 180 days the Miccosukee tribe gave Gov. Jeb Bush to negotiate their proposed switch to Class III Vegas-style slot machines at their Miami-Dade casino expired last week. Florida, eyes closed, moved closer to another inevitability.
And on Tuesday, the Broward County Commission decided to step into the void left by a do-nothing Tallahassee and invent its own slot-machine regulations.
Who knows where all this will lead? Well, everyone knows. Into a morass of lawsuits. And probably to some nasty, vengeful anti-Broward legislation out of Tallahassee.
But Broward could always follow Tallahassee's lead and just ignore those niggling laws we find inconvenient.
The governor's gamble
Lawmakers ended their session last week with no slot machine legislation, which could result in slots that are unregulated and untaxed.
A Times Editorial
© Copyright 2003 St. Petersburg Times
Thursday, May 12, 2005
Florida is already home to entirely too much gambling, but the play by Gov. Jeb Bush and lawmakers to block voter-approved slot machines is unseemly and unconstitutional. It may also prove costly.
Bush was among the public officials who campaigned against slot machines in Broward and Miami-Dade counties. Unfortunately, voters statewide adopted a constitutional amendment in November that allows for the machines, and voters in Broward decided in March to accept them.
The constitutional imperative is clear: "In the next regular legislative session occurring after voter approval of this constitutional amendment, the Legislature shall adopt legislation implementing this section and having an effective date no later than July 1." But lawmakers, sworn to uphold the Constitution, concluded their session Friday with no slot machine legislation.
Legislators are legitimately concerned about the impact of new forms of gambling. Though the slot machines are authorized for three Broward race tracks and one jai alai fronton, lawmakers know the Miccosukee and Seminole Indian tribes are next in line. Indian reservations are generally allowed to operate any type of gambling that is legal in the states in which they are located, which is one reason House members wanted to pass a law authorizing only lower-stakes bingo-style machines.
This newspaper also opposed the slot machines initiative, but opponents cannot credibly change the definition. The amendment was for Las Vegas-style slot machines, and the head of the National Indian Gaming Commission already has made that point painfully clear. He told senators the tribes have all the authority they need, with or without a state law, to install them.
This puts the governor and lawmakers in a pickle. By refusing to pass a constitutionally required law that could regulate and tax slot machines and by ducking negotiations with Indian tribes for the same, they could end up on the outside looking in. They could end up with a court calling the shots, or they could end up with slot machines that are unregulated and untaxed.
The late Gov. Lawton Chiles once found himself in a similar spot, and he too fought the noble fight to stop Indian tribes from offering bingo-style slot machines. Chiles refused to negotiate, left a $200-million offer from the Seminoles on the table, and then ended up with nothing. Not only do the tribes now operate casinos in six counties, they also do so free from any state regulation and any revenue sharing. The public never got a dime.
If lawmakers take the Constitution seriously, they have little choice but to come together in special session to meet the July 1 deadline. If the governor wants to require financial and regulatory concessions from the tribes, he has little choice but to sit down and negotiate. The problem with the moral high ground is that it may leave Floridians empty-handed.