Is Isle of Capri‘s racino a disappointment (especially for horsemen)? Is Boyd Gaming taking Florida expansion off the table? Is Magna Entertainment threatening to close overextended Gulfstream Park? What’s a Florida lawmaker to do?
Why, legalize every form of gambling short of cricket fighting, of course. Statewide slots, a lottery, regulated “adult arcades,” high-stakes poker — it’s all on the table as Sunshine State solons head back to Tallahassee, no doubt looking forward to two months of nonstop eye-poking and head-slapping between Gov. Charlie Crist (R) and archenemy House Speaker Marc Rubio (R), as they tussle over a shrinking state budget.
Rubio’s still trying to rein in Crist’s Class III compact with the Seminole tribes, but that horse may have long since left the stable. The Seminoles are proceeding as though they’d never heard of Marc Rubio. Should he get a court to overturn the compacts, Florida lawmakers who have had a taste of once-forbidden Seminole gambling lucre may already be hooked and repudiate Rubio (who’s a lame duck, anyway).
As for the absence of cricket fighting from the list of proposed fiscal remedies, I’d guess that’s just an oversight.
The Schmuck Report: On a humorous note, sports reporter Peter Schmuck takes a glance at the gleaming façades of Florida’s racinos and declares that “the experiment with increased gambling in Florida appears to be a success.” This is either disingenuous boosterism for bringing racinos to Maryland (an on-again, off-again quest) or else Schmuck is happily inhabiting a parallel universe.
Corzine opines. New Jersey’s governor goes on the record as favoring smoke-free casinos. He also backs the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority in its quarrel with Atlantic City over whether or not to sell Bader Field to Penn National. (Turns out Penn wants additional land re-zoned for casinos, too.)
Financing is sufficiently concrete, Corzine says, for both Revel and MGM Grand Atlantic City, and he’s bullish on Pinnacle Entertainment‘s postponed megaresort. And playing the stock market isn’t gambling, he says: “We made probability judgments about the viability of assets.”
