Florida’s 2017 gambling legislation rodeo is officially on

Florida’s first gambling legislation runner is officially out of the blocks in 2017 following Thursday’s filing of a 112-page tome covering everything from gas pump lottery sales to daily fantasy sports.

On Thursday, state Sen. Bill Galvano (pictured) unveiled SB 8 (full text here, summary here), the state’s latest effort to end the squabbling among its gaming stakeholders, resolve the standoff with the Seminole Tribe and arrive at some concrete legal position regarding DFS.

Past history has amply demonstrated that Florida has a tendency to set ambitious legislative agendas and then do little to bring those pigs to market. So we’re not going to get too deep into the weeds on SB 8 today but we will touch on the high points.

First off, SB 8 would approve the $3b gaming compact Gov. Rick Scott reached with the Seminoles in December 2015 but which the legislature never got around to ratifying. The matter took on new urgency last November after a federal court ruled that the state had violated the terms of its previous compact by allowing pari-mutuel operators to offer so-called designated-player card games.