Florida’s Seminole Tribe and Governor Rick Scott reached an agreement about the tribe’s exclusivity over the provision of blackjack within the state’s borders more than a month after the Legislature failed to solve a two-year dispute with tribal officials.
The settlement was discussed in the Governor’s office and according to local media, no Senate or House members participated in it.
Under the new agreement, the Seminole Tribe will be able to continue offering banked card games exclusively at its casinos until 2030. In exchange, it will have to make monthly payments to the state. The new deal will see Florida collect $220 million immediately. The tribe will also contribute another $120 million within the next year.
The agreement came as an extension to a 2010 gambling compact between tribal officials and the state. Under that compact, the Seminoles were granted exclusivity over blackjack for a five-year period in exchange for $1 billion in payments to the state.
The tribe continued offering blackjack at its casinos even after the compact expired in July 2015. They claimed that Florida had violated its part of the agreement by allowing state pari-mutuels to offer the so-called designated player table games.
Under the settlement, signed last night by Gov. Scott and tribal officials, state gambling regulators will “take aggressive enforcement” approach against the provision of such games in non-tribal casinos and other gambling facilities.
Florida’s legislative session ended in May without any deal being made between the tribe and the Legislature, although both camps invested quite a lot of efforts in attempts to reach an accord. There were two gambling-focused bills presented during this year’s sessions – one in the House and the other in the Senate.
The Senate legislation called for a massive statewide gambling expansion, while the House piece took a more conservative approach. Both bills contained provisions that proposed possible solutions to the tribal casino issue, but tribal officials found neither proposal good enough.
House and Senate legislators themselves found it difficult to strike the balance in what would be best for the state’s gambling industry, so both legislative efforts died in the Legislature before the session’s end.
As part of the agreement, Florida will have to withdraw a countersuit that it filed early in 2017, claiming that it had not violated the 2010 compact by allowing pari-mutuels to offer designated player games.
The lawsuit came as a response to a suit filed by the Seminole Tribe in relation to the five-year blackjack exclusivity agreement. Late last year, US District Judge Robert Hinkle sided with the tribe, ruling that state gambling regulators had indeed ran afoul of the exclusivity provision.
