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Online Blackjack News - The Politics of Gambling in Flirda Heats Up
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Gov. Crist views state-sanctioned casino gambling on tribal lands as a timely way for the state to plug a $1.1-billion budget shortfall without cutting services or raising taxes or fees. There are some other opportunities we're looking toward to help us with the budget challenges we have today. We're negotiating with the tribe," Crist said Tuesday. "I want to be open-minded, and I want us to be innovative." It was the most directly that Crist has tied more gambling to the state's fiscal salvation.
The federal government has given Florida until Sept. 11 to reach an agreement with the tribe to allow slot machines and possibly other forms of gambling at seven sites, including the Seminole Hard Rock Casino in Tampa. Talks between Crist's office and the tribe include plans to give the tribe exclusive control over games other than slot machines, such as blackjack and roulette, in return for the state getting a share of the revenue from those games.
Barry Richard, an attorney for the tribe, said federal law requires a compact between the state and the tribe to give the tribe exclusivity - a monopoly on certain forms of gambling or territorial limits on Class III slots."Exclusivity could be blackjack, or roulette, and nobody else could have it," Richard said. "There is no decision on any of that."
The Seminole Tribe now has Class II bingo-style machines in which gamblers compete against each other. Class III slots involve betting against the house, often with higher payouts. Crist said that negotiations with the tribe, while "delicate," lessen the need for the Legislature to make steep cuts in the budget next month. Some legislators are not likely to be as eager as Crist to plug a budget shortfall with gambling money.
One gambling critic, House Speaker Marco Rubio, has asked the state attorney general if, under federal law, the state must allow games currently banned by state law. In a July 26 article in Florida Baptist Witness, Rubio warned against relying on gambling money "to cure everything from school-funding shortfalls to rising property taxes."
Rubio called it "morally indefensible" for the state to justify expanded gambling on the grounds that by taxing it the state coffers would benefit. As Crist sees it, the law requires him to negotiate.
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| Source:
Blackjack2002 News Staff
| Wednesday, 22 August 2007 |
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