By James Jefferson
Arkansas New Bureau
LITTLE ROCK — The Texas businessman who wants to put casinos in seven Arkansas counties said Tuesday the timing is right for a ballot proposal to expand gambling in the state.
After five tries, Michael J. Wasserman received the Arkansas attorney general’s permission Tuesday to try to put a constitutional amendment authorizing casinos across Arkansas on the 2010 general election ballot.
Attorney General Dustin McDaniel certified the popular name and ballot title of a proposal to authorize Wasserman’s Arkansas Hotels and Entertainment Inc. to operate casinos in Boone, Crittenden, Garland, Jefferson, Miller, Pulaski and Sebastian counties.
The attorney general’s office rejected four previous versions of the proposed amendment. A fifth submittal was certified by then-Attorney General Mike Beebe in 2006, but Wasserman abandoned his campaign after his sister died.
“We’re going full force now,” he told the Arkansas News Bureau in an interview Tuesday. “We’ve got about 120,000 signatures to collect. Though we only need 77,000, we’re going to get enough signatures that there’s no question that Arkansans want this on the ballot.”
Wasserman, who runs a Gainesville, Texas-based rural Internet service provider, said he would employ professional canvassers. Voter approval of a constitutional amendment authorizing charity bingo and raffles in 2006 and last year’s approval of an amendment authorizing a state-run lottery to fund scholarships will only help the effort, he said.
“It certainly confirms what I already knew: The climate is changing,” he said.
Casino initiatives have had a rough road in Arkansas, opposed mainly by faith-based groups and casino operators in neighboring states. The state Supreme Court kicked two proposals for casinos, a lottery and charitable bingo from the ballot in 1994 because of canvassing irregularities. Several more were jettisoned by the courts in 1996, and the one that made the ballot offering all three games failed overwhelmingly. A similar measure fared even worse in 2000.
“We’ve had these initiatives pop up before and they haven’t gone anywhere,” said Larry Page, director of the Arkansas Committee for Ethics Policy. “We’ve seen Mr. Wasserman before. We’ll watch it, and we’ll do what’s necessary to try and confront that if need be.”
Three years ago, the Arkansas AFL-CIO agreed to do much of the groundwork for Wasserman’s casino amendment. Union president Alan Hughes said Tuesday his office had not been contacted by Wasserman but would be open to supporting the current measure.
“If what he’s offering creates jobs, especially in this economy, we’d be glad to sit down and see what’s possible,” Hughes said.
He said the AFL-CIO had been supportive of the amendment in 2006 because of a labor project agreement in which there would be no opposition to organizing unions at the casinos.
“But we haven’t seen what he’s offering this time yet,” Hughes said. “We’ll have to hear what it is, and take it back and have the members vote on it.”
Before Tuesday, McDaniel rejected the most recent version of the proposal Feb. 20, saying the wording was too vague.
The attorney general said Tuesday that changes submitted since then made the name and title acceptable for certification, though McDaniel said he also made minor, mainly grammatical changes in the ballot title “to fully inform the voters of the effect of your measure.”
The proposed amendment would allow Wasserman’s company to own and operate all of the casinos the measure would authorize. It would limit the number of casinos to one per county and would ban casinos from any other locations in the state.
It also would prohibit the Legislature and local governments from enacting measures to regulate casino gambling.
Gross gaming revenue of a casino would be subject to state and local gross receipts taxes at the same rate as other businesses, payable to the state general revenue fund. However, the measure would prohibit any other taxes, fees or assessments related specifically to casino operations.
It would direct the Legislature “to appropriate these tax revenues in an attempt to reduce or eliminate the state’s gross receipts tax on food purchased at a retail store.”
At Gov. Mike Beebe’s behest, the Legislature cut the state sales tax on food from 6 percent to 3 percent in 2007 and lowered the tax another penny this year.
Wasserman’s proposal would declare all constitutional provisions and laws that conflict with the casino amendment inapplicable, but would not supersede the charitable bingo or lottery amendments.
