Giddy'ap, whoaa! Slot machines and horse racing at Miami International Airport tripped at county Planning Advisory Board ... by gimleteye

Top brass at Miami International Airport planned to slip by the Planning Advisory Board yesterday on the inside rail and win at the finish. At stake, using gaming as a revenue source for Miami's airport. "Come to Miami, we'll take your money at the airport!" They didn't count on getting called back to the starting gate.

It is hard not to be a little giddy about gambling at Miami International. I've been to a lot of the world's great airports, and I've never seen slot machines at any of them. Sorry, but slot machines at Miami International would just be so @#R#$ crass. I mean really: is that how we want to greet visitors from around the world? There is another aspect to my light headed vertigo. This is a county and a state where a Republican majority of elected officials have always leaned on "values voters". . I didn't think gambling fit with the conservatives' program; partly why Florida lawmakers insisted that the only way to legalize slot machines was in a facility that also contained horse racing. You wouldn't want kids skipping Sunday school to play slots at the local Seven Eleven.

Under this burden of needing a horse track to gin up slot machines inside the passenger terminals, Miami airport officials have been floating this ridiculous plan that is moving, nevertheless, with the force of unfunded budget deficits toward the county commission. They don't give a flying fig about horses. Whatever gets thrown together by way of quarter track racing is going to be a sad sack place-- with its own opportunities for corruption. I suggested, tongue in cheek, that the quarter horse track be put on one of the swales between the taxiing runways and the main runways, so passengers could watch on the way outbound and inbound. The airport gambling ploy shows Miami Dade really is a county run by bottom feeders. Excuse my values.

So here is what was slipped in: adding "gaming establishments ("limited to Miami International Airport only").


There were two issues before the PAB yesterday: one, the application by Florida Power and Light for mining millions of cubic yards of lime rock in South Dade for new nuclear fill pads; withdrawn at the last minute. The FPL attorney cited that a new application would be forthcoming, under easier rules for getting beyond an angry, irritated public that has more influence with state-wide elected officials than with the local scavenger species; the unreformable majority of the county commission. Both these applications-- FPL and the airport horse track casino-- demonstrate why changes to comprehensive plans really should be voted on, by the local electorate. Florida Hometown Democracy is coming in 2010. All these awful plan changes hope to squeak through, well before their instigators have to rev up the fear machine with the voters of Florida.