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The Home permitted a measure Wednesday that some concern would arrange a serious blow to the standardbred horse business.
The chamber voted 73-43 to permit racetracks and different gaming websites to transform solely to different types of playing, getting ready the pari-mutuel regulatory invoice (SB 8A) for Gov. Ron DeSantis‘ signature. That adopted a play of brinkmanship that noticed the Home abandon a proposal to preserve racing at Florida’s solely harness racing observe.
The proposed modification would have pit the Home towards the Senate on the deliberate remaining day of labor for the Particular Session. The scrapped modification paralleled changes the Home panels made Tuesday to its model of the laws (HB 7A).
Coral Springs Democratic Rep. Dan Daley, the son of a standardbred horse breeder, filed the modification. He has contended for weeks that the closure of the state’s final remaining harness racing observe would deal a crippling blow to Florida’s standardbred horse business, which offers horses to that observe. Daley has been pushing to have harness racing remain coupled to casino operations underneath Florida regulation.
With out his modification, the invoice now awaits the Governor’s signature and not using a carve-out for the observe and permits it to decouple racing from different gaming operations together with different pari-mutuel services like jai-alai and shuttered canine tracks.
The Home invoice sponsor, Clearwater Republican Rep. Chris Latvala, warned the laws might die if the Home kicked the measure again to the Senate. The Senate, which unanimously approved the invoice on Tuesday, didn’t plan to carry a flooring session Wednesday. However Senate President Wilton Simpson advised his colleagues to remain close by.
Democrats, together with Rep. Joe Geller of Aventura, stood by their colleague and voiced assist for Daley’s modification.
“I say we name their bluff, we move this factor out, we get up for what we expect is correct, we again up Rep. Daley,” Geller mentioned.
However the Republican majority folded and defeated that modification.
Daley advised Florida Politics the transfer was an empty menace. He had the votes in each the Home and Senate he added, however management there made Sen. Shevrin Jones, a West Park Democrat, withdraw the modification from that invoice.
“I want that the Senate would have let the identical course of work out,” Daley mentioned.
When requested whether or not he wished Home Speaker Chris Sprowls had backed him up, Daley mentioned the Speaker had been gracious.
Nevertheless, he plans to maintain driving the problem and urged individuals working for statewide workplace ought to contemplate the problem, which he estimates might have an effect on 13,000 voters.
“We speak about how (agriculture) is so necessary to this state,” Daley mentioned. “I don’t perceive why we’re about to do away with a complete state enterprise for the advantage of a Nevada gaming firm.”
The invoice opens the door to expanded playing operations at many of the pari-mutuels in Florida. That provides operators some steadiness to the enlargement of playing being provided to the Seminole Tribe of Florida by the new Seminole Compact, which the House ratified Wednesday after the Senate ratified it the day prior.
Caesars Leisure, homeowners of Florida’s final remaining harness racing observe — Isle Casino Racing Pompano Park — has already utilized for a rezoning that would get rid of the observe whether it is allowed to decouple the on line casino.
Greyhound tracks, which lost their racing in 2020 when voters banned canine racing by a 2018 constitutional modification, and jai alai frontons, which have been withering in reputation for many years, can switch all their enterprise to their on line casino operations underneath the invoice.
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