State: State to continue to fight new tribal gambling rules

TAMPA -- The state Attorney General's Office said Friday that it will continue its battle with the U.S. Department of Interior over new gambling rules issued for the Seminole Indians.

The rules stop short of allowing full Las Vegas-style gambling on Seminole reservations but would allow high-stakes poker, off-track parimutuel betting and certain electronic gambling machines.

The state thinks the rules are too permissive.

"Our office is disappointed with that outcome," said Assistant Attorney General John Glogau. "We fully intend to follow through with our litigation."

In an effort to halt the promulgation of more liberalized gambling rules for the Seminole tribe, Attorney General Bob Butterworth sued Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt and his department in April 1999 in U.S. District Court in Tallahassee. Butterworth claims only states have the right to regulate gambling within their borders.

The Interior Department had issued the rules to resolve an impasse between the state and the Seminoles. The tribe wants the right to offer a full array of Las Vegas-style games, including blackjack, keno, roulette and craps.

Florida officials, pointing to three failed casino gambling initiatives in Florida in the past 23 years, firmly opposed Seminole overtures for a gambling compact, even when the tribe offered the state a 45-percent share of gambling profits.

The new Interior rules, released Jan. 19, pleased neither side.

Seminole General Counsel Jim Shore said the tribe "had hoped to get much more" to generate profits, particularly with a $400-million project begun earlier this month to build Hard Rock Cafe casino-hotels in Hollywood, Fla., and Tampa.

The tribe now offers high-stakes bingo, low-stakes poker, scratch-off games and electronic video slot machines at gambling halls in Tampa, Hollywood, Fla., Immokalee, Coconut Creek and Brighton.

The Attorney General's Office was particularly displeased that the Interior ruling approved hundreds of electronic gambling machines that produce the lion's share of the tribe's casino profits but that the state has long held to be illegal.

The tribe's so-called "video pull-tab machines" spit out a paper receipt for winners instead of cash. The Interior Department said it saw "no legal distinction" between the tribe's gambling machines and Florida's electronic lottery devices, which dispense scratch-off lottery tickets.

"That's ridiculous," Glogau said. "The Seminoles' video pull-tab machine is a slot machine.

"The distinction is that you don't play a lottery machine. You buy a scratch-off ticket. You get something worth a dollar. That's not gambling."

In a lawsuit against the tribe three years ago, the U.S. Attorney's Office in Tampa also asserted the tribe's electronic gambling machines are illegal. The suit has been inactive since 1999, when the tribe sought authority from the Interior to offer Las Vegas-style gambling.

"We are aware of the Department of Interior rules," U.S. Attorney's Office spokesman Steve Cole said Friday. "At this time, we are evaluating it to see what impact it will have on our case."

The Interior rules open the door for the tribe to offer on-site parimutuel events and off-site betting via simulcasts of greyhound racing, horse racing and jai alai. The rules also okay high-stakes poker.

The state currently allows only penny-ante poker, with jackpots limited to $10.

Glogau said the state has little argument with those forms of gambling, since Florida already permits parimutuel gambling and poker.

But the Attorney General's Office takes issue with the part of the new Interior rules permitting the Seminoles to offer "electronic simulations of animal racing."

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Lucy Morgan

From the Times state desk