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JAMES A. SMITH SR.
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The Florida Legislature concludes this week its special session called to balance the state budget, wisely rejecting new gambling revenue as a means of closing the 2008-2009 budget deficit. Nevertheless, citizens concerned about the detrimental effects of gambling expansion on our society should not be so confident about the coming regular legislative session.
The wisdom shown by legislative leaders in rejecting Gov. Charlie Crist’s request to rush through the special session an approval of his judicially repudiated and careless deal with the Seminole Tribe does not mean that there may not be greater openness to such when legislators reconvene in March for their regular, annual session.
As pro-family leaders warned in a news conference last month, there is a “perfect storm” brewing in Tallahassee that may radically change Florida’s mostly family-friendly environment to a state that has taken a dramatic plunge into big-time gambling as a crutch to balance the budget.
The “perfect storm,” consisting of mounting state budget deficits and the pending gambling compact with the Seminole Indian Tribe, which was invalidated by the Florida Supreme Court, may result in an expansion of gambling in Florida.
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Our governor is the chief rainmaker in this perfect storm. As a candidate, Crist promised in an interview with me, as well as other news media, that he was opposed to gambling expansion. Nevertheless, in addition to his illegal compact with the Seminoles, Crist has also presided over an escalation of the Florida Lottery, which this month joined the national PowerBall Lottery.
The Dec. 18 Tallahassee news conference was led by Bill Bunkley, legislative consultant for the Florida Baptist Convention, and also included the Christian Coalition of Florida and the Florida Family Policy Council.
Bunkley, a longtime member of Idlewild Baptist Church in Lutz, praised the actions “to date” of the Florida House “in their thoughtful and deliberate action” challenging the legality of the Crist-Seminole compact before the Supreme Court. He urged the current House leadership “to follow the lead of their predecessors in opposing this compact, now that they have won the right to participate in its outcome.”
Bunkley, who spoke by phone because his flight to Tallahassee was delayed by weather, added, “This is a time for Florida statesmen and stateswomen. This is a time to stand up to the special interest groups and avoid the easy way out. This is a time to protect our way of life and the great family friendly reputation Florida enjoys today around the globe. It is time to do the right thing. It is time to stop the expansion of gambling.”
Dennis Baxley, executive director of Christian Coalition and former state representative, said that gambling expansion “pours resources down a black hole,” never delivering on the economic development promises of its proponents.
Baxley is a longtime member of First Baptist Church in Belleview.
Money spent on gambling is “dollars that will not be spent to pay the rent, purchase a vehicle, pay child support, meet family health care needs, or feed a family,” Baxley said.
“While we would like to believe gambling dollars are largely discretionary entertainment dollars, closer analysis shows us that these are in large part gambling addiction dollars being spent at great expense to the family, often by those who can least afford it and it results in a heavy tax on the poorest families,” he added, later noting he chaired a gambling-related committee while a member of the Florida House.
Nathan Dunn, vice president of public policy of Florida Family Policy Council, outlined gambling’s negative consequences, calling them the “ABC’s of gambling—addiction, bankruptcy and crime.”
Dunn is a member of Thomasville Road Baptist Church in Tallahassee.
He noted the Florida Council on Compulsive Gambling reported in 2002 that the Sunshine State has a higher percentage of problem and pathological gamblers, .08 percent, than the rest of the nation, .04 percent, and Florida’s “at risk population” is nearly twice the national average.
Dunn said also a national study found that counties with gambling had a bankruptcy-filing rate 18 percent higher than those without.
“By evaluating the results from other communities we know that when Class III gaming is permitted the crime rate is nearly twice the national average,” he said.
Dunn said the coalition wants to protect Florida’s “treasured position as a family-friendly state” and in the midst of discussions about the invalidated Seminole compact, to “shine a light on what is being overlooked—the impact on our families.
“Given the overwhelming data showing the destructive results of gambling, we urge Florida’s leaders to say ‘no’ to any [gambling] expansion,” he said.
The news conference was held the same day as the organizational meeting of the Select Committee on Seminole Compact Review, which was appointed by House Speaker Ray Sansom in December to study the agreement between Gov. Charlie Crist and the Seminole Indian Tribe. The compact promised hundreds of millions of dollars paid to the state by the Seminoles in exchange for exclusive rights to Vegas-style slot machines outside of South Florida, along with certain currently illegal games. The committee is expected to make recommendations to the House of Representatives in time for the regular legislative session, which begins March 3.
The Select Committee will seek public comment and Florida Baptists and other citizens concerned about gambling expansion should be lively participants.
The Select Committee heard this week from the office of Attorney General Bill McCollum, providing the body with an overview of federal law as it pertains to Indian gaming. McCollum has been among the few state leaders who has fulfilled his duty to follow the law pertaining to gambling in stark contrast to Crist, who has brazenly ignored the Florida Supreme Court’s ruling overturning his compact with the Seminoles and has done absolutely nothing to attempt to stop the illegal gambling at the Seminole casinos.
In a Dec. 17 letter to U.S. Attorney A. Brian Albritton, McCollum requested federal law enforcement officials to “commence a criminal prosecution” of the Seminole Tribe for “conducting illegal Class III gaming activity on its Indian lands in disregard of federal law.”
McCollum pointed to Seminoles’ expansion of illegal “banked” games—like blackjack and baccarat—to its casinos in Tampa and Immokalee. The illegal games were permitted as part of the compact the Supreme Court declared invalid in July.
“In my constitutional role as Florida’s chief legal officer, I am deeply concerned that the Tribe continues to defiantly ignore the decision of the Florida Supreme Court. There can be no dispute that operating banked card games is contrary to Florida law,” McCollum wrote.
“Only swift enforcement action will stop the illegal gaming activities and force the Tribe to negotiate with the State of Florida for a valid compact,” he concluded.
Let’s pray that Albritton responds favorably to this appropriate request.
We also need to pray that legislators would act with prudence and wisdom as they deal with the Crist-Seminole Compact. Rather than being driven by current, short-term budget deficits, legislators should have the long view in mind and reject a needless expansion of gambling that will harm the Sunshine State.
The promise of new, easy—that is, “no-new-taxes”—revenue provided by a gambling expansion will be proven to be false, as it has every other time gambling has been offered as the budget-balancing panacea wherever it has been tried. In the meantime, lives will be harmed, communities cannibalized, and businesses destroyed in the wake of a gambling expansion.
Let’s pray rather than a “perfect storm” for gambling expansion, the current crisis will provide the “perfect storm” for legislators doing the people’s business in the most statesmanlike fashion, rejecting the truly evil notion that the state should rely upon making its citizens losers in Indian casinos in the false hope of filling government coffers.