Florida lawmakers struggle with slots

Jackie Hallifax

Monday, Feb. 28, 2005 | 9:11 a.m.

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- Promised a big payoff for education, state voters broke with Florida history in November and approved a ballot measure that could allow the expansion of gambling in Broward and Miami-Dade counties.

The measure allows the two counties to hold separate referendums that will let voters decide whether to permit Las Vegas-style slot machines at seven dog and horse racetracks and jai-alai frontons in South Florida. Early voting already has started on the March 8 referendums.

The debate over gambling expansion is deeply political -- and that has been underscored by the maneuverings ahead of the decision by South Florida voters. Gov. Jeb Bush and key lawmakers in the GOP-controlled Legislature are ardently opposed to efforts to broaden gambling in Florida.

The pro-slots movement, financed by the pari-mutuel industry and counting former Florida Education Commissioner Jim Horne as its leading spokesman, is pouring millions of dollars into its campaign to persuade voters to allow the slot machines. Their pitch: Slots will provide millions of dollars annually for education.

Bush warns voters not to buy into the promise.

"The big casinos are seducing the voters with the hollow promise of more education funding," he wrote this month in a letter to the Christian Coalition of South Florida. "The true costs are significant and real: long-term decay of our traditional industries and the social fabric of our communities."

Opponents, who include gambling cruises to nowhere and Indian casinos in Florida, have tried to persuade voters that expanded gaming would erode Florida's reputation as a family-friendly vacation spot and increase drug use and crime. They are also pushing lawmakers to write rules that are tough on the new casinos.

Not that they need much convincing.

"I don't want to become a get-rich-quick state and whatever I can do to keep that from happening I'm going to do -- within the confines of the constitutional amendment," state Sen. Dan Webster, a longtime opponent to gambling who is the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

But he and other conservative lawmakers know that while they may not be able to control whether slots are allowed, they still have a lot of power over the issue.

They can decide a tax rate, how many slot machines are allowed, how long they can operate and even who owns them. Webster has also considered putting caps on the size of winnings and banning alcohol in slots rooms.

Republicans aren't all of the same thought on the matter, though.

Sen. Dennis Jones, who chairs the Senate Regulated Industries committee, thinks the slots initiative is a good opportunity for the state to get some of the money that now goes untaxed at Indian casinos, cruises-to-nowhere and out-of-state places like Nevada and Mississippi.

"We see the buses going to Biloxi, the planes going to Las Vegas," Jones said, calling the chance to keep tax dollars in state and earmarked for the future a good thing.

Lawmakers on both sides of the issue expect that if they fail to act, the industry will move ahead anyway, arguing that the constitutional amendment doesn't require a state law to take effect.

Even before the November election, the seven pari-mutuels signed a deal with the Florida School Boards Association to give the group a 30 percent cut of slot revenues if lawmakers didn't act.

With that contract, the industry could make good on its promise to voters to raise nearly $500 million a year for education.