Posted on 11/03/2003 6:10:48 AM PST by Tumbleweed_Connection
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. - Dog tracks are a horse-and-buggy bet in gambling's space age. And they're hurting. Everywhere. Bill and Cheryl Ruettgers sat outside the Daytona Beach Kennel Club during a recent Wednesday matinee, watching young handlers show off the greyhounds before race 7. Another 200 or so bettors joined them, a very small crowd searching the programs for a winner. It didn't used to be like this at Daytona. You used to wait in lines a dozen deep to place your bet, said 61-year-old Bill Ruettgers. You used to have a shot at a real score when you won, said Cheryl, 57, but the payouts at Daytona are so small these days, it's almost not worth the bother. It's the same all across Florida, home to one-third of the country's dog tracks. Bets on Florida races totaled $575 million in 2002, about half the amount wagered in 1991. So in a last-gasp effort to resuscitate their expiring industry, the owners of certain South Florida dog tracks want a transfusion. They want the very lifeblood of American gambling: slot machines. The Legislature has rejected bills the past two years to allow slot machines at tracks, so now the track owners want to ask voters directly. They already have honed their marketing pitch. Give them slots in just Miami-Dade and Broward counties, they plan to tell voters, and they'll return as much as $800 million for education every year. Plus, they say, slots will rescue a sport that has run in Florida for more than 70 years but now flickers in near irrelevance. Florida dog tracks employ 4,300 licensed workers and paid $19.6 million in taxes and fees last year. But interest has dwindled. A state audit released Monday found attendance at Florida's tracks has dropped by 80 percent since 1990. In central Florida, the Seminole Greyhound Park in Casselberry closed in 2001 after years of declining attendance, and the total amount wagered at the Daytona track and the Sanford-Orlando Kennel Club in Longwood has plummeted about 75 percent since 1991. The state audit recommended legalizing a form of slots known as video-lottery terminals at tracks and jai alai frontons, but the ballot initiative would allow slot machines only in South Florida. It still would require statewide voter approval, and that's a daunting prospect for the dog industry. Few Floridians know about the plan because it's still moving through the ballot-initiative process, still the subject of a legal fight to determine whether it gets to voters at all. Measures to allow casinos in Florida appeared on the ballot three times from 1978 to 1994. Despite millions of dollars from casino companies in Las Vegas, the initiatives were overwhelmingly defeated each time. Gambling experts say Vegas has written off Florida. The casino industry has nothing to do with the current slots plan. And the same groups that organized furious protests of previous attempts to expand gambling here already have announced their opposition to allowing slots at dog tracks. They say Florida has enough gambling; that slots will create more problems than they will solve; and that, far from saving dog racing or producing tax revenues, the new plan is really about further enriching the small, politically connected ring of track owners. For a variety of reasons, several pollsters, political scientists and Wall Street analysts said they doubt the slots initiative will succeed even if it makes it to the ballot. But the track operators insist their polling shows that Floridians are more receptive to gambling these days. Since voters last rejected casinos, lottery, poker rooms and American Indian casinos have flourished in Florida, along with dozens of unregulated casino boats and most recently adult arcades with pseudo slot machines offering low-stakes prizes. This time, they say, the results will be different. The tracks turned in their ballot initiative, along with the required 50,000 signatures, to the Attorney General's Office in May. The measure is now before the Florida Supreme Court for procedural review. Though it's the dog tracks that are mostly pushing the initiative, the ballot measure also would allow horse tracks and jai alai frontons in Miami-Dade and Broward counties to install slot machines - if those counties choose to approve them. It also would mandate that, if the Legislature decided to tax slot revenues, all those tax dollars would be spent on education. The state Supreme Court rejected a similar proposal last year on a technicality. If the court approves the revamped initiative, the tracks will have to collect an additional 450,000 signatures to get it on next year's ballot. This measure differs from last year's: Only pari-mutuels in the South Florida counties would be eligible for slots. The prior proposal would have authorized them at all 27 of the state's tracks and frontons. "It has a greater chance of passing if it's limited to these two counties," said Fred Havenick, president of the Flagler Dog Track in Miami. "People in other parts of the state can benefit from the tax revenues even if they live hundreds of miles away from the slots." Ron Book, a track lobbyist, said it's pointless to talk about whether Florida ought to allow slots. They're already here by the thousands, he said, on the day-cruise casino boats and Indian reservations, and they're paying nothing in taxes. Havenick said the pari-mutuel industry expects slot revenues would be taxed at 40 percent. Some of the track profits from slots would boost purses for races at the South Florida tracks, he said. "If we don't do this, the best races will migrate away from here, and we will lose the industry," he said. Harry Olsen, general manager of the Daytona Beach Kennel Club, said he can foresee a time when the facility won't be able to operate year-round anymore. "Most of the pari-mutuel facilities are dying a slow death, Daytona included," Olsen said. "If some other revenue stream doesn't come along, such as slot machines, we might lose them. We've already lost some." No Casinos Inc., which has opposed nearly every effort to expand gambling in Florida, knows the issue can no longer be fought on moral grounds. A Gallup Poll in May found that 63 percent of Americans now think gambling is morally acceptable, compared with 34 percent who say it's morally wrong. "Many people aren't offended by gambling," said John Sowinski, a spokesman for No Casinos. "They just don't want it in their back yard." Whatever slot machines might return in tax revenues, he said, will be outweighed by the social costs of gambling, including addiction services, theft and street crime. He pointed out that a sizable majority of casinos' profits come from slot machines. "If you give these people slots, you've essentially given them 80 percent of what voters have said three times they can't have," he said. Animal-rights activists say the greyhound industry is inherently cruel to the dogs on which it depends, and they're eager to see the whole thing sink under its own money-losing weight. "Greyhound racing is no longer in demand in the gambling marketplace," said Carey Thiel, president of GREY2K USA, a group that thinks dog racing is inhumane. "There's no evidence that legalizing other forms of gambling at pari-mutuel facilities increases interest there." Sitting on the bench outside the Daytona dog track, waiting for her husband, Cheryl Ruettgers agreed that slots won't create more bets on dog races. The Ruettgerses live in Charlotte, N.C., but have been coming to Daytona for 30 years to visit Bill's mother. They visit the Daytona track often. Back home, they travel to Wheeling and Charleston, W.Va., where slots are permitted. "People who come to play the slots, they're not going to bet the dogs," she said. "You go up there, there's probably 1,000 cars in the parking lot. They're not there for the dogs."
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