The first word on the legality of the slots referendum

This article in yesterday's Washington Post, "Slots Plan Pulled to 'Resolve Concerns': Backers React To Opinion of Council Lawyer," states:

Offshore gambling promoters withdrew their latest plan yesterday to bring slot machines to the city after the D.C. Council's chief lawyer said the proposal cannot be legally submitted to District voters. In a letter to D.C. election officials, the council's general counsel, Charlotte Brookins-Hudson, said the gambling measure is not a "proper subject for an initiative," in part because it would permit the District to collect only 25 percent of slots proceeds in taxes.

The proposal "unlawfully caps the amount of revenues that may be collected," Brookins-Hudson wrote. "Here, an entity is proposing how much it will tax itself. . . . This may not be done by initiative." Jeffrey D. Robinson, an attorney for slots promoters, said that argument never arose in 2004, when a virtually identical measure won approval from the D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics. Nonetheless, Robinson said, gambling promoters decided to withdraw their proposal so they can "resolve the concerns" in Brookins-Hudson's letter. He said they intend to submit a new plan that will pass muster with the council.

It just so happens that I raised this issue in a post to themail, in May 2004, in response to a Court rejection of a proposed Smoking Ban referendum on the DC ballot:

By the by, if “a ballot initiative cannot be 'a law appropriating funds' — i.e., it cannot force the Council to allocate money,” then the same court should deny the proposal for a slot machine parlor being shepherded through the political and money circles by John Ray. After all, aren't laws and holdings supposed to be consistently applied?

Index Keywords: gaming