Seminoles and Charlie Crist

The Seminole Tribe of Florida voted to approve a gambling compact with the governor Friday at a closed-door meeting of its tribal council in Hollywood, according to people close to the negotiations.

But in what may be a deal-breaker for lawmakers who must ratify the agreement, the council refused to accept some provisions sought by legislative leaders.

Gov. Charlie Crist and the tribe have until Monday to meet the deadline set by the Legislature to complete an agreement to authorize slot machines, blackjack and other banked card games at its tribal casinos.

If Crist signs the agreement, he is expected to call a special session in October to have lawmakers sign off on the deal, as required by law.

The governor wouldn’t comment on the tribe’s decision Friday. “Stay tuned for details Monday,” he said at a Fort Lauderdale news conference to introduce his Senate appointee, George LeMieux.

LeMieux, Crist’s former chief of staff, served as the governor’s lead negotiator with the tribe.

Earlier this week, the governor and the tribe agreed to a plan to pay the state $150 million a year in exchange for operating the games at all seven of its casinos. But that went farther than the guidelines set by the Legislature, which authorized the card games only at the tribe’s Hard Rock casinos in Hollywood and Tampa and its two other casinos in Broward County.

Bill McCollum

Attorney General Bill McCollum said it’s time for Florida leaders to put pressure on the federal government to shut down what he calls illegal gambling at Seminole casinos.

McCollum, the state’s top lawyer, repeated has tried — to no avail — to get federal prosecutors to shut down blackjack gambling at Seminole casinos, which have operated under a legal cloud since the state Supreme Court threw out the tribe’s deal with Gov. Charlie Crist.

The state has “very little leverage with the tribe,” McCollum said.

“I don’t have the jurisdiction to enforce anything,” he told reporters today. “The federal government has the responsibility to enforce this law. And they’re not doing it and they need to have some pressure brought on them, in my opinion, to do it.”

The tribe and Crist are currently in closed-door negotiations over a gambling deal proposed by the Legislature in May. If that deal doesn’t come to fruition, the tribe almost certainly will keep running blackjack games and appeal to the federal government. What happens then is a point of heated legal dispute.

If Seminole blackjack games continue indefinitely without a valid compact, McCollum predicted the federal government will put a stop to it — but it might take awhile.

“At some point the feds need to step in and will, I think,” McCollum said. “But I don’t know long they’re going to protract this. They’ve got their own ideas. You’ve got a new administration….the change in personnel and people making policies. You’re not back to square one, but you’ve definitely lost a step.”

Note: It is this writers opinion that the Seminole Indian tribe or NATION should be allowed to do what they want.  If Republicans believe in Free Market Economics they would allow this.  It is only convenient for the lawmakers to say they support Free Market Economics to only pick and choose which sections of the market’s to be free.

Seminoles and Charlie Crist

TALLAHASSEE — Gov. Charlie Crist and the Seminole Tribe of Florida began negotiating a new gambling compact Wednesday that would bring revenue to the state in exchange for the tribe’s right to a monopoly on some of its casino games.

Lawyers for the governor and the tribe met in Tallahassee to set schedules and review the issues to be discussed, said George LeMieux, a Tallahassee lawyer and Crist’s former chief of staff who will be a part of the governor’s negotiating team. They will resume discussions in mid-July with a goal of completing the talks by Aug. 31, he said.

The governor must re-negotiate the agreement he signed in 2007 with the Seminole Tribe of Florida because it was invalidated by the Florida Supreme Court a year ago. Since then, the Florida Legislature passed legislation that lays out the framework for what Crist should seek in his talks with the tribe.

Under those guidelines, the state would give the Seminoles the exclusive right to operate slot machines outside of Miami-Dade and Broward counties and the exclusive right to banked card games — blackjack, baccarat and chemin de fer — in Broward and Hillsborough counties. In return, the tribe would be expected to pay the state at least $150 million a year.

Barry Richard, one of the tribe’s lead lawyers, has said the dollar amount is too high and the legislative conditions are a non-starter because they would require the tribe to continue paying — but at a lesser rate — if lawmakers give casino games to other parimutuels in the future.

LeMieux said Wednesday that he expects the tribe to reach an agreement with the state despite those concerns. ”The tribe is extremely professional and I believe they will work in good faith to get something done, as opposed to failing to reach an agreement,” he said.

The issues of contention will be the same as they were during the 2007 negotiations, LeMieux said: which games will the tribe receive exclusive rights to, how much will it pay the state, how many casinos will be allowed to offer blackjack and other banked card games and how much regulation will the tribe have to comply with.

The goal of the governor’s office and the tribe is to have a compact signed by Aug. 31, the deadline legislators set out in the bill.

The governor’s team will also include his general counsel Rob Wheeler and his chief of staff Eric Eikenberg. LeMieux said he is volunteering his time to work on the negotiations to “keep some continuity to the talks.”

”The Seminole tribe is pleased that the compact talks are going again and it looks forward to the ultimate resolution of the issue,” said Gary Bitner, a spokesman for the tribe.