Tribe told: Vegas-style games out

Interior Department says no to Seminoles' bid for full casino gaming.

By JEFF TESTERMAN

© St. Petersburg Times, published January 23, 2001

TAMPA -- The Interior Department has rejected a request by the Seminole Tribe of Florida to offer full casino gambling on reservation lands.

The federal agency said the tribe may offer high-stakes poker and bingo, off-track parimutuel betting and some electronic slot machines at its casinos, but not Las Vegas-style gambling such as blackjack, craps and roulette.

The preliminary ruling, issued Friday, disappointed tribal officials, who have waged a decade-long campaign to bring full casino gambling to Florida.

Just two weeks ago, the tribe and Hard Rock Cafe International broke ground on a $400-million project to build casino-hotels in Hollywood and Tampa where Hard Rock officials expected one day to see Las Vegas-style gambling.

"Nobody is jumping up and down with glee," tribal attorney Bruce Rogow said Monday. "This makes it clear that Hollywood, Tampa and Immokalee will not be Las Vegas."

"The department's ruling doesn't go far enough," said tribal general counsel Jim Shore. "We had hoped to get much more."

Florida officials, pointing to failed casino gambling referendums in 1978, 1986 and 1994, have steadily resisted the Seminoles' quest to expand reservation gambling, even backing away from a compact that would have given the state a 45-percent share of the tribe's gambling profits.

The Seminole tribe, pioneers in Indian gambling in the United States, currently offers high-stakes bingo, low-stakes poker, scratch-off games and electronic lottery games on its reservations in Hollywood, Tampa, Coconut Creek, Immokalee and Brighton.

The tribe finances more than 90 percent of its $200-million annual budget with gambling profits and pays each of its 2,500 members a monthly dividend of $2,000.

In its request for full casino gambling, tribal lawyers said Florida officials practiced hypocrisy by opposing some gambling by the Seminoles yet sanctioning state lottery games, Las Vegas nights for charity and full casino gambling on cruise ships sailing off the state's territorial waters.

"This (Interior ruling) is a very cramped view of what we think the state already allows," said Rogow. "This is a big gambling state."

The Florida Attorney General's Office declined to comment on last week's ruling, saying it had not yet received it from Washington.

The ruling does appear to remove a cloud from the tribe's use of hundreds of electronic gambling machines that reward winners with a printed receipt instead of cash.

In a federal lawsuit filed three years ago, Charles Wilson, then the U.S. attorney for the Middle District of Florida, asserted that the machines were illegal and asked a judge to order their removal. Now that suit likely will be dropped.

The Interior ruling, however, does not open the door to the installation of traditional Las Vegas slot machines, commonly known as "one-armed bandits," on Seminole lands.

Friday's ruling gives the tribe formal federal permission to offer off-track betting via simulcast races of horses and greyhounds from around the country, just as is offered at most dog tracks and horse racing facilities in Florida.

The biggest change allowed by Interior's decision is permission for the Seminoles to offer high-stakes poker, analogous to the tribe's bingo games, where super jackpots may be in the tens of thousands of dollars. Before now, with poker jackpots limited to $10, most of the tribe's card tables often sat unused. The Interior Department will now meet with state and tribal officials to agree on a regulatory structure for oversight of the newly defined Seminole gambling. No regulations can be implemented until a federal lawsuit filed by Florida against outgoing Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt has been resolved.

Filed in July 1999, the suit by Florida Attorney General Bob Butterworth challenged Babbitt's authority to promulgate new gambling rules for the Seminoles.

The tribe had sought Babbitt's special rulemaking to settle an impasse created by court decisions surrounding the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988. The Act required tribes to secure a compact from the state before offering full casino gambling.

The tribe first sought that compact in 1991, but Gov. Lawton Chiles and, later, Gov. Jeb Bush, said no. The tribe sued the state for a compact, but the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Florida enjoys constitutional immunity from tribal suits.

Babbitt's rules were supposed to settle the matter about what gambling the Seminoles can offer, once and for all.

"It's going to be interesting to see the state's reaction and what they'll do with their lawsuit," said Rogow. "After 10 years, it would be nice to see the parties agree."

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