Florida decoupling bill passes through committee

The Florida House Commerce Committee on Tuesday advanced a bill that would allow Gulfstream Park in Hallandale Beach and Tampa Bay Downs in Oldsmar to decouple their racing and gambling licenses.

The vote was 13-9, according to a roll call at the end of a hearing in which members of the Florida breeding communities and several horsemen urged the committee to vote against the bill.

The advancement of the bill, which is being pushed by 1/ST Racing and Gaming, the owner of Gulfstream, means that the Florida Thoroughbred industry will once again be on opposite sides of the fence on legislation that failed to gain enough support to pass last year.

Lobbyists for industry interests opposed to the bill had predicted prior to the meeting that the bill would pass, citing informal vote counts and the lack of majority opposition in the same committee last year. While last year’s legislation passed in the House, it stalled in the Senate after Gov. Ron DeSantis expressed his opposition to it.

Horsemen and the breeding community maintain that even the threat of decoupling puts the entire horse racing industry in the state in jeopardy. Voters in Gulfstream’s home county, Broward, passed a referendum in 2005 allowing a casino at the track, and the legislature then passed a bill tying the casino license to live-racing requirements, currently 55 days a year.

The sponsor of the bill, Rep. Adam Anderson, a real-estate developer who represents part of the Tampa Bay metropolitan area, told the House committee that he is a “big supporter of racing” but that the bill would merely treat the two tracks like all the other tracks in Florida, citing a bill that allowed other pari-mutuel operations to decouple. All of those operations dropped their pari-mutuel licenses.

“I want to see [racing] thrive,” Anderson said. “But I want to see it thrive independently, because we value free-market principles here in the free state of Florida.”

Lonny Powell, the chief executive officer of the Florida Thoroughbred Breeders and Owners Association, urged the committee to reject the bill because the FTBOA and other racing constituents are currently working on a plan that could be presented to the legislature next year revolving around a new racetrack in Ocala, Fla.

“This will be a proposed solution that will make everyone winners around the table,” Powell said, including existing racetracks.

Steve Koch, the FTBOA’s vice president of operations, told the committee that the decoupling bill would force hardship on the industry rather than giving it a leg up.

“This is not a bill to address an industry in decline,” Koch said. “This is a bill to manufacture that decline.”

Several legislators brought up the 2005 referendum to explain why they would vote no on the bill, saying that the people of Broward County voted for combinations of casinos and tracks, not standalone casinos. If the legislature wants to change the rules, said Rep. Felicia Simone Robinson, then the bill should also give Broward Country residents a vote on that change.

“We’re doing them an injustice,” Robinson said.

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