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Butterworth challenges wording of slot machine ballot questionBy ALISA ULFERTS © St. Petersburg Times, published May 19, 2001 TALLAHASSEE -- Florida Attorney General Bob Butterworth is raising questions about whether a ballot initiative to legalize slot machines at dog and horse tracks misleads voters and meets legal requirements. In a letter Friday to state Supreme Court Chief Justice Charles Wells, Butterworth says the proposed constitutional amendment tries to exempt itself from current constitutional requirements. He wants to know if that's legal. Butterworth also asked the court to decide whether the ballot language is misleading and whether it meets the state's single-subject rule. The court is expected to rule some time in the next few months. Slot machine supporters want the question on the 2002 ballot. If approved, the measure would allow individual counties to okay slot machines at existing racetracks. In addition to allowing the slot machines at the tracks, the ballot summary tells voters they can approve a tax on slot machines with a simple majority rather than the two-thirds the Constitution requires for new taxes. "It is questionable whether a proposed constitutional amendment may exempt itself from an existing constitutional requirement . . .," Butterworth wrote. If it can't exempt itself, then its language telling voters otherwise is misleading, he wrote. Butterworth also noted that the proposed ballot language would have the Legislature spend the tax money from the slot machines on senior citizen programs, teachers' salaries and benefits, building new schools and other education programs. "Requiring voters to choose which classifications they feel most strongly about and then requiring them to cast an all or nothing vote on the classifications listed in the amendment, defies the purpose of the single-subject limitation," Butterworth wrote. Florida voters have rejected casino gambling on the state ballot three times, most recently in 1994, when the state's dog and horse tracks and jai alai frontons asked to be among 47 locations licensed as casinos. The measure failed with 62 percent of voters opposed. Several groups petitioned for gambling measures to be placed on the ballot that year, and Butterworth questioned language in their proposals, too. But ballot organizer Daniel K. Adkins, president and chairman of the group backing the slot machine proposal, has said this measure is more narrowly defined than in the past. Adkins said Friday his attorneys are reviewing Butterworth's letter. "Nothing I have read in (the letter) concerns me," Adkins said. Adkins' company runs the Hollywood, Fla., greyhound track and a track in West Virginia. Tracks in Broward, Escambia and Miami-Dade counties have donated to his group, Floridians for a Level Playing Field, which has raised and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars promoting the measure and getting voters to sign petitions. Already, anti-gambling and animal rights' groups are lining up to challenge the group. The Orlando-based No Casinos in Florida sent out a release Friday condemning the ballot measure. "How many times do Florida voters have to say NO before gambling interests will listen?" wrote spokesman John Sowinski. Grey2K USA, a Boston-based political organization devoted to the protection of greyhound dogs, is leading other animal rights groups in a legal challenge. - Information from the Associated Press was used in this report.
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From the Times state desk Lucy Morgan
From the state wire
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