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Political Quibbles On Gambling Threaten Loss For State Treasury

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: December 3, 2007

Gov. Charlie Crist appears to have scored a financial touchdown, but the Legislature is challenging the play. House Speaker Marco Rubio says Crist stepped over the line when he negotiated a gambling tax to be paid by the state's tribal casinos.

Crist should back down and send the Legislature the plan for ratification. He shouldn't wait to be ordered to do so by the Florida Supreme Court, to which Rubio has appealed.

Once the wrangling stops, the focus will return to the substance of the deal. Crist negotiated well, to the benefit of taxpayers and the tribes.

There's a chance lawmakers will spoil Crist's work just to appear tough on gambling. That's a risk Crist must take. He is, after all, managing a democracy, not a private company.

The better Crist's deal is understood by the public, the more likely lawmakers are to go along with it. The tribal casinos are hugely profitable and their games are now untaxed.

Scrapping Crist's deal would restart the negotiations. The outcome could leave the state with a smaller share of tribal gambling profits, probably much smaller than the $100 million-plus per year Crist bargained for.

If lawmakers delay or don't make a good-faith offer, the federal Department of Interior will intervene on behalf of the tribes. Native-American tribes are allowed to offer on their federal reservations any gambling allowed in the state. Since Florida voters in 2004 permitted Broward and Miami-Dade counties to have slots, Vegas-style slots cannot be stopped at the Hard Rock Casino in Tampa and similar sites statewide.

If the feds intervene because the Legislature kills the deal, the state could come away with nothing.

To keep that from happening, Crist negotiated a deal that gives the tribes an incentive to accept a new tax. The casinos will be given a monopoly on slots outside of Broward and Miami-Dade, ensuring that slots won't spread to horse tracks or convenience stores. And he threw in blackjack and a few similar card games. Legal opinions differ, but by legalizing blackjack, Crist may have exceeded his authority.

Blackjack is a Class III game, like roulette and slots. But unlike slots, blackjack has been illegal everywhere in Florida.

Case law researched by Attorney General Bill McCollum suggests Crist had to offer the tribes slots, but didn't have to offer more Class III games. In his defense, Crist faced a federal deadline to either let the tribes install untaxed slots or offer them an incentive to accept a new tax.

Here's the reality. Few people will notice the difference once blackjack arrives. Once the Vegas-style machines are introduced, slots will remain the overwhelming favorite of gamblers, as they are in Atlantic City and Las Vegas.

Blackjack, especially if confined to tribal casinos, won't corrupt a state already spending millions on lottery tickets, slot-like bingo machines, cruise-ship gambling and poker at pari-mutual sites, not to mention unregulated offshore Internet sites and illegal bookmaking on sports.

If Rubio's desire is to kill Crist's deal, fellow legislators should make sure he fails. Fighting gambling is popular, and rightly so, but helping the existing casinos avoid taxes is no way to fight it.

Crist doesn't smooth feathers by quipping, "If people don't like gambling, they shouldn't go." The same could be said to justify dog fighting or prostitution.

But Rubio doesn't help by taking a stand that could cost the state hundreds of millions of dollars without making a ripple in the existing sea of gambling.

He would better serve taxpayers by giving Crist elbow room to get the state a very big bite of the take.

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