Expanded decoupling bill goes to Florida committee hearing

The controversial proposal that would allow Thoroughbred track operators in Florida to decouple racing from their slot-machine and card-room licenses gets a committee hearing early next week in Tallahassee. It comes complete with new language that opponents read as a direct attack on the state’s breeding industry.

House bill 105, which has been rewritten and expanded to 29 pages from the original, five-page version introduced in January, goes in front of the commerce committee as the last item of a two-hour meeting scheduled to start Monday at 4 p.m. EDT.

“The proponents of decoupling have quintupled the size of the bill and are calling it a compromise,” former Kentucky state senate floor leader Damon Thayer said Friday morning in his new role as a senior advisor to the Thoroughbred Racing Initiative. “That is an absolute fallacy. They haven’t talked to anybody in the industry, they have now made a bad bill worse, and it will completely destroy the Florida breeding industry.”

In talking points shared with Horse Racing Nation, opponents said the new version of the bill changes the regulations under which breeders have been guaranteed certain percentages of purse money and other financial incentives. It gets rid of minimums for purses and for money shared from simulcast wagering. The state government also would gain more regulatory power over the operation of training tracks that do not host races.

The proposal has been pushed by the Stronach Group, which owns and operates the racetrack and casino at Gulfstream Park. Horsemen were told by Stronach’s 1/ST management team in January that if the bill were to become a law, racing would continue at Gulfstream through 2028. If not, executives said they could make no such guarantee.

“It should be clear to all supporters of horse racing that Belinda Stronach and her henchmen are trying to enrich her on the backs of Florida horsemen and breeders,” Thayer told HRN. “We’ve always known that the skids have been greased in the House for this bill, and our efforts are focused on stopping the bill in the Senate. Hopefully, our friends in the Senate will see the destructive nature to the changes in this bill and stop it dead in its tracks.”

Stronach executives who have been asked since March 5 about changes in the original bill have not responded to HRN requests for comment.

The House industries and professional-activities subcommittee voted 12-4 on Feb. 5 to approve the bill and send it to the commerce committee. The vote went straight down party lines with Republicans all in favor and Democrats against.

Tom Rooney, the president of the National Thoroughbred Racing Association and a Republican who was a member of Congress from Florida, has spoken with state legislators since the hearing. Saying the one-sided vote did not necessarily foreshadow certain passage of the bill, he believed legislative support was misguided based on the questions he heard during the hearing. He felt the potential loss of jobs and livelihoods did not sink in.

“I don’t think that the people that were asking those questions understood the reach and the gravity of what they were talking about,” Rooney said this week on Horse Racing Nation’s Ron Flatter Racing Pod. “I talked to those guys that asked those questions, because some of them are from around my area that I’ve known for a long time. I’m like do you realize that when you see what the actual truth is this? Every one of them, they didn’t know that.”

Adam Anderson, a first-term Republican from a district that cuts through the parking lot at Tampa Bay Downs, sponsors the bill. Speaking at the subcommittee hearing, he led the chorus of voices who said the proposal lines up with earlier moves to get rid a counterproductive condition for license holders.

“This burdensome and anti-business policy (of coupling) restricted jai-alai and then other horse-racing permit holders. ... The bill applies the core principles that we value in the free state of Florida to the Thoroughbred industry,” Anderson said.

Even though Gulfstream Park has been the biggest advocate of House bill 105 and the companion Senate bill 408, Tampa Bay Downs became part of the discussion when the subcommittee approved a rewrite that would allow the track’s card-room license to be decoupled, too.

There are 19 Republicans and seven Democrats on the commerce committee, a ratio that reflects the entire Florida legislature. If the bill is approved there, it would go to the full House. Senate bill 408 has been assigned to three committees but awaits its first public hearing.

Monday’s meeting of the House commerce committee will be held in Webster Hall, which is room 212 of the Knott building in Tallahassee’s capitol complex. It will be streamed live on the Florida Channel.