The Arkansas Racing Commission on Thursday deferred action until later on a Mississippi casino operator's appeal of its rejected application to build a multimillion-dollar casino resort in Pope County.
More time is needed to review information submitted by Gulfside Casino Partnership and to prepare a full report on Gulfside's application, Commissioner Alex Lieblong said. He added that a special meeting would likely be called sometime before August.
Casey Castleberry, an attorney for Gulfside Casino Partnership, told the commission that the administrative appeals process paves the way for the company to take the issue to court if necessary.
He said in an interview after the meeting he was surprised a decision was not made, but was "very pleased" they wanted to set a special meeting after further review of the application and Gulfside's appeal arguments.
"Hopefully they'll make a decision soon and hopefully it's favorable," Castleberry said.
Gulfside's application was rejected at the commission's June 13 meeting, along with four others vying for the spot. None had letters of support from current government officials, as required by a Racing Commission rule passed earlier this year that says endorsements can come only from officials in office at the time the application is submitted.
Gulfside included letters from Jim Ed Gibson, then county judge of Pope County, and Randy Horton, then mayor of Russellville in its submission. The letters were issued just before the two left office at the end of December.
Castleberry told the commission that the endorsements satisfy Amendment 100, which does not specify when the letters must be obtained.
"By adopting this rule, the commission excluded the only qualified applicant," Castleberry said. "So by adopting this rule, [you] ensured that during this application period, there would not be a qualified applicant."
Passed overwhelmingly in the state last year, Amendment 100 allows casinos to be placed in Pope and Jefferson counties -- which currently have no gambling facilities -- and allows Oaklawn Racing Casino Resort in Hot Springs and Southland Gaming and Racing in West Memphis to expand their operations into full-fledged casinos.
The Racing Commission rule also contradicted earlier rules unanimously passed by the commission in late December that said letters of support and resolutions by the Quorum Court only had to be dated after the effective date of Amendment 100, which was Nov. 14, Castleberry said.
Current Russellville Mayor Richard Harris told the commission that the endorsement letters from previous officials were not valid and the one issued by Gibson was "an embarrassment to read."
"If I were asked to write a letter endorsing a casino in my community, that would generate an impact on the community, I think I would put a little more thought into it than write such a vague, nebulous letter that, in my opinion, is not necessarily [worth] being considered a true letter of support," Harris said.
The issue over casinos and letters of support has sparked heated controversy in Pope County, whose voters overwhelmingly rejected Amendment 100 at the polls and also passed an ordinance calling for a special election before county officials can support a casino applicant.
Applause broke out from the audience when Racing Commission attorney Byron Freeland said the local ordinance lacks validity and is trumped by Amendment 100.
The grass-roots pro-casino group Pope County Majority -- which began about a month ago and quickly grew to more than 6,000 members -- filled several seats at the meeting, spurring Lieblong to ask the group's founder Kelly Jett to speak to the commission.
Jett said that many of the same Pope County residents who said no to the casino at the November polls are now members of her group campaigning for a resort in the area to boost the economy and infrastructure.
"We're going to grow economically, we're going to develop, we're going to have better infrastructure, better schools," Jett said. "And we hope that the Racing Commission supports us -- and eventually our judge and Quorum Court will support us as well -- and help us bring a great resort casino to our county, and that we can partner with them and Pope County will prosper more than it ever has."
Metro on 07/19/2019