Florida is on the clock; Political football in New Jersey

In Florida, the clock is running fast on a court order that the state reach an agreement with the Seminole Tribe or kiss at least $250 million (possibly as much as $400 million in proposed legislation) goodbye forever. Part of the problem is that Speaker of the House Richard Corcoran (R, below) and state Sen. Bill Galvano (R, left) are tied to Jeff Soffer‘s apron strings, and Soffer wants to move the Mardi Gras Casino & Racetrack gaming license to Miami Beach, at best, Broward County at worst. Genting Group, which is saddled with expensive Miami real estate it purchased several years ago on the presumption that resort casinos were coming, would like to see a return on its investment, too.

Florida’s lower house would prefer to cut the Gordian knot in a simple fashion, ratifying the new Seminole compact and deregulating DFS. The Senate bill is more convoluted, with some concessions to the tribe but with provisions it will find unpalatable, such as legalizing “designated-player” (i.e., banked) card games across the state, which the Seminoles say tramples on their compacted monopoly on such games. The Senate bill also contains a complicated

provision whereby parimutuels could decouple races from also offering slots, with their tax rate to be stepped down to 30%, then 25% — but with a mandatory subsidy to the horsey set. DFS would also be legitimized in the Senate bill.

State Sen. Travis Hutson (R) minced no words about the high stakes involved; “This could be our last possible chance to regulate gaming as a legislative body, and … the fiscal implication is hundreds of millions of dollars a year.” Does the state Senate really want to kiss $400 million a year (guaranteed) goodbye? For the moment it seems bent upon playing chicken with the Seminoles. I wager it won’t be the Seminoles who flinch first.

* Good ideas come and go but bad ideas are with us forever. Such as it is with New Jersey politicians who are obsessed with breaking Atlantic City‘s monopoly on casino gambling. In a new poll, only 34% of Garden State residents favor the idea, vastly preferring that the state legalize marijuana instead, if a state-revenue fix is needed. Despite Gov. Phil Murphy (D) being in favor of casino expansion, the numbers are no better than in 2016, when the idea got crushed in the election. Batty Jeff Gural is even willing to bet against his own Tioga Downs, saying “it’s all over” for Upstate New York casinos if he could open a $4 billion casino megaresort at the Meadowlands (where the house would win, unlike Meadowlands tenant the New York Giants). Still, Gural is putting his money on the 2024 ballot. He told a reporter, “I’d rather wait six years until New York [City] is either open or getting ready to open, at which point I think voters will say, ‘Wait a second, what are these Atlantic City people arguing?’” With state Senate President Stephen Sweeney (D) firmly against titling any more windmills, it’s reasonably certain that Gural would have to make his case by petition drive rather than legislation.