Suit filed to block taxing device used to bring in slots

Alan Sayre

Monday, May 8, 2000 | 2:23 a.m.

A taxing plan being used to bring slot machines to three Louisiana horse racing tracks has been challenged in state court by gambling opponents who say it was used illegally to subvert a two-thirds tax vote of the Legislature.

The suit, filed Friday in district court in Baton Rouge by St. Landry Citizens for Quality Life Inc., is aimed at Evangeline Downs' plans to build a new track near Opelousas, complete with a separate slot-machine casino.

A member of the group says that although the suit is centered around tax laws, its primary purpose is to keep slot machines out of St. Landry Parish.

However, the suit challenges the taxing plan that also will be used by Louisiana Downs at Bossier City and Delta Downs at Vinton in their plans to bring in slot machines.

In 1997, the Legislature passed a bill allowing the three tracks to have slots, provided that the machines were approved by parish referendums. Evangeline Downs also wanted to move to St. Landry Parish since Lafayette Parish had outlawed video poker in 1996.

Voters in Bossier and St. Landry parishes approved the machines. But slot proponents could not muster the needed two-thirds vote in 1998 to impose a state tax on the gambling proceeds - a requirement before slots could be brought in.

Last year, the Legislature approved - by a simple majority vote - local taxing districts that would collect the slot tax and remit it to the state. The suit challenges that plan as unconstitutional.

The suit contends that the Legislature has to pass taxes by a two-thirds vote and lawmakers illegally assigned their authority to the local taxing commissions, whose members are appointed by the governor.

Octave Pavy, an Opelousas attorney and one of the leaders of the anti-gambling group, said that if the suit is successful, the track, as well as slots, will not come to St. Landry Parish.

"I think the horse racing is just a front," Pavy said Monday. "Obviously, they wouldn't move a race track from just outside of Lafayette to Opelousas if they weren't going to have slots."

Jack Burson, an assistant district attorney and legal adviser to the St. Landry Parish Police Jury, said he believes precedent is on the side of the track. The state used a statewide taxing district - the Louisiana Recovery District - during the late 1980s and early 1990s to collect a sales tax to pay off bonds sold to cover the state's accumulated budget deficit, he said.

Burson also said the local referendum process to decide gambling's future makes it a case of "majority rules."

"We never could understand why the Legislature would authorize the local-option elections and not allow the results to be implemented as they were allowed in the places (gambling) was banned," Burson said.

Racing officials have said that slot machine proceeds, part of which will be dedicated to raising purses, are needed to help Louisiana tracks compete with other forms of gambling. But critics say the parlors will be nothing other more than land casinos.

Louisiana Downs officials have said they hope to have the track's slot casino running later this year. Evangeline Downs has an option on two tracts of land near Opelousas for the new track and slot machine parlor. State law will allow Evangeline Downs to operate slots for a year before the new track has to begin racing.

Although voters in Calcasieu Parish rejected slots for Delta Downs by a 2-to-1 margin in 1997, the track won by a narrow margin last fall after requesting a second vote.

The New Orleans Fair Grounds has not been made eligible to have slot machines, since Harrah's New Orleans Casino has a state-granted monopoly on land-based casino gambling in Orleans Parish.

All of the slot legislation went into law without Gov. Mike Foster's signature or veto.