Miami dice? Don't bet on it
There’s been a lot of noise coming from our south lately about full-blown casinos in downtown Miami and at the revamped Fountainbleu Hotel on Miami Beach.
The Miami Herald has reported that developers of the proposed Miami Worldcenter project are exploring a constitutional amendment drive to allow casinos.
Good luck with that.
In theory, the idea makes perfect sense.
In reality, it’s never going to happen.
Some things to consider:
--If the developers go the amendment route, it would need 60 percent approval statewide to go forward. The 2002 amendment that opened the door to slot machines at pari-mutuels in Broward and Miami-Dade squeaked by with just over 50 percent approval. The threshold for passage has since been changed to 60 percent.
--This doesn’t have to be done by constitutional amendment. The Legislature has the authority to allow casinos or craft laws allowing votes at the local level. But that’s a real longshot, considering the traditional anti-gambling bent of central Florida and Panhandle legislators.
--Casino expansion beyond the pari-mutuels in Miami-Dade would blow up the framework of the state’s compact with the Seminoles, which already has been nullified by the Florida Supreme Court. The compact was based on limited exclusivity, with all Seminole payments stopping if any kind of slot machines or other gambling landed beyond the South Florida pari-mutuels. So much for that minimum annual $100 million coming from the Seminoles.
New casinos would infinitely complicate the compact process, and could ultimately allow the Seminoles’ gambling empire to go on forever without a single cent going to the state.
The shame of this is beachfront resort casinos are what Florida should have based its gambling policy on long ago. Can you imagine how much the state could have made if it authorized a dozen casinos in tourist areas – say Key West, Miami Beach, Hollywood, Fort Lauderdale, Boca Raton, etc. – with a bidding war up front from casino companies for the licenses and then a healthy rake of the profits?
Instead, after numerous casino proposals were shot down through the decades (by legislators and voters), we’ve had this backdoor piecemeal gambling expansion that has led to the state getting ridiculously shortchanged.
The Seminoles and Miccosukees were able to launch an untaxed empire after the federal government passed the Indian Gaming Regulation Act in the 1980s, and local voters allowed slots at pari-mutuels in response to the tribes’ virtual monopoly.
Now the Seminoles continue to run blackjack and other table games without a compact and the federal government has shown no inclination to stop them. The pari-mutuels are playing catch up again and want a lower tax rate (currently 50 percent) and full table games.
What a squandered opportunity.
Too bad nobody had the foresight to do this right 30 years ago.
We could have been Las Vegas’ worst nightmare.
--MICHAEL MAYO
NICK SORTAL began playing 3-card "gut" and "Indian poker" on high school band trips, moved on to "night baseball" and "pass the trash" during a Dr. Pepper-infused midnight game in the 1980s at the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, and now play in a regular neighborhood Hold 'Em game in Plantation. I have been given the assignment of writing about the gambling life in South Florida casinos for the Sun-Sentinel...which means sitting around watching poker on TV now counts as research.
