OK, Florida Legislature, try not to torpedo the gambling deal | Editorial

The Seminole Tribe’s revenue-sharing agreement with the state has run its course, Florida is getting nothing from the piles of cash the Seminoles are raking in and suddenly, lo and behold, the governor announces a new deal with the tribe has been reached, and our state will benefit to the tune of billions of dollars.

That was the headline a couple of weeks ago when Gov. Ron DeSantis announced he had reached an agreement with the Seminoles, subject to ratification by the Florida Legislature.

It was also the headline six years ago when then-Gov. Rick Scott announced precisely the same thing.

Scott’s agreement then withered on the vine as, year after year, the Florida Legislature tried and failed to approve the agreement, unable to untangle a Gordian knot of not only pro- and anti-gambling forces, but also an array of competing interests within the pro-gambling contingent, from the Seminoles to pari-mutuels to out-of-state casino moguls anxious to put a glimmering, beeping, whirring slot machine haven right on Biscayne Bay.

It wasn’t as though the Legislature didn’t have capable hands who wanted to get a deal done. For two of the years in which Scott’s deal was on the table, the Senate President was Republican Bill Galvano of Bradenton, who also served as president of the National Council of Legislators from Gaming States.

And yet, the Legislature managed to lose out on a gambling agreement worth $3 billion, which is a significant amount to lose in any casino, much less the Seminole Hard Rock.

This time around, with the agreement only just announced, the Legislature has come farther than it ever has before with a special session lined up to begin May 17 that will deal entirely with ratifying the gambling deal.

The Florida Legislature needs to get this done. This year’s $101.5 billion budget was only made possible through $10 billion in federal funds through the well-meaning but profligate Biden administration. That money won’t be there forever. Additional revenue streams are needed. And since the Legislature in this year’s session took an extra $1 billion in annual sales taxes and, rather than using it for essential programs instead turned it around into a corporate tax cut, those revenues are needed more than ever.

The new DeSantis-Seminole gambling deal would bring legalized sports betting to the state in a partnership between pari-mutuels and the tribe, a measure that helps ensure these two work together instead of being at loggerheads. And the deal brings sports gamblers in from the cold, so that this illegal but widespread activity is properly taxed and regulated. According to the American Gaming Association, sports betting is already a multimillion-dollar industry in Florida, despite its illegality, and legalizing it could mean more than $100 million a year for the state.

Aside from that money, the agreement would allow craps and roulette at Seminole Indian casinos, and would permit an expansion of those casinos near the tribe’s already-iconic guitar hotel. Pari-mutuels would be allowed to keep the designated-player games that were the source of a tribe-backed lawsuit under the terms of the last successful gambling agreement, signed in 2010 under then-Gov. Charlie Crist. And those big out-of-state moguls could get a piece of the action too, as moving around gambling licenses would not violate the agreement, so Jeffrey Soffer, the billionaire owner of both the Fontainebleau and the Big Easy casino in Hallandale Beach, could move his casino enterprise from the latter location to the former.

And under the 30-year deal, the state gets about $2.5 billion in the first five years, plus millions more under a revenue-sharing agreement.

Everybody wins — well, everybody who doesn’t have a problem with gambling. And there are parts of the agreement that are certainly a bridge too far. Tucked away on page 70 of the 75-page agreement, under the unassuming headline “Miscellaneous,” the agreement calls for the state and the tribe to, within three years of the agreement being approved, negotiate in good faith to allow the tribe to offer slots, table games and all its other gambling offerings over mobile devices.

It will be hard for the state to negotiate in good faith over this, in that no price is high enough to justify allowing Floridians throughout the state to play the Seminoles’ slot machines over their phones from the comfort of their own couches. That recipe for disaster would bankrupt every gambling addict in the state before they even had a chance to seek help.

Such a massive gambling expansion across this state should kick in 2018′s Amendment 3, which made further gambling expansions across the state subject to a vote of Floridians. Because it’s an add-on whose removal won’t sink the whole agreement, the Legislature should strike down this “miscellaneous” addendum. But it should be very careful about changing what’s in the meat of the agreement.

We do not believe Floridians get a vote on expansions of more games or more casinos if they are on tribal land, but neither do we believe, as the agreement maintains, that gambling on mobile devices falls within the purview of gambling “on tribal land” because the tribe’s computer servers are sitting on Seminole property.

If the state should allow an expansion of casino licenses, or even move them from Broward to Miami-Dade, that too should mean we, the voters, get a say.

Whether this entire agreement amounts to enough of an expansion of gambling that it requires a referendum of Floridians will likely be the subject of a court battle, with the state and the tribe on one side and anti-gambling advocates on the other. No Casinos, the group behind the 2018 constitutional amendment, has already said it will sue.

That day in court will come. But in the mean time, when the Florida Legislature meets on May 17, it should try not to mess this up as so many legislatures have before. It’s a good deal, and too much mucking with it could make the Seminoles fold their hand.

The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of consists of Deputy Editorial Page Editor Dan Sweeney, Steve Bousquet and Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson. Editorials are the opinion of the Board and written by one of its members or a designee. To contact us, email letters@sunsentinel.com.