By Patrick Crowley
The Cincinnati Enquirer

FLORENCE - For the second straight year, Kentucky lawmakers have left Frankfort without voting on bills filed to legalize casino-style gambling.

Now, as they look toward the 2004 General Assembly's session, advocates of expanding gaming - either at horse tracks, through land-based casinos or a combination - are debating whether their best strategy might be to convince lawmakers to let the voters decide.

"It has to be a choice of the public," said Fort Mitchell developer Jerry Carroll, former owner of Turfway Park in Florence and a proponent of land-based casinos.

"If the public is behind it, and the public sees that this is a way to bring money into the state, then the only way to get it done ... is through a constitutional amendment, a vote of the people," said Carroll, developer and part owner of the Kentucky Speedway in Gallatin County.

Kentucky's thoroughbred industry is still not sold on the notion that putting the gambling issue on the statewide ballot is the best route to go, said Turfway Park President Bob Elliston, who has led the industry's lobbying effort in Frankfort.

But the horse industry has now left Frankfort empty-handed two years in a row, despite an intensive effort that included more than two dozen lobbyists working the legislation in this last session.

The industry's offer to pay the state $400 million cash in anticipated taxes was not taken up as the legislature hammered out the state's tightest budget since World War II.

The lack of success in passing a bill has the industry reconsidering its approach, Elliston acknowledged.

"When you have a situation that might be politically contentious, (a statewide ballot issue) is an easy way to say, `Let's let the voters decide,''' he said. "As far as our approach ... , we've got to make a political determination that, to be honest, I don't know where we'll come down right now."

The thoroughbred industry's strategy has been to back legislation that would, if passed by the General Assembly, allow the state's racetracks to build so-called racinos.

Those are freestanding casinos adjacent to tracks where patrons could play slots, blackjack, poker, keno and other games on computer screens known as Video Lottery Terminals, or VLTs.

West Virginia and Delaware are among the states where racinos are legal, but several other states - including Ohio, Pennsylvania and Maryland - are considering them.

Some lawmakers speculated that the $400 million gaming bill did not find support because legislators don't want to be on record voting to expand gambling.

But some of those same lawmakers have said they would vote to place the issue on the ballot.

Carroll believes that mentality provides an opening for winning approval to put a constitutional amendment on the ballot.

But he also said that whoever is elected governor in the fall will also have to support the issue going to the voters, "or it doesn't have a chance."

"That's the only way to get it done," he said.

Carroll, president of the Kentucky Speedway in Gallatin County, sold Turfway Park five years ago but has been pushing for legalized casino-style gambling in Kentucky for more than a decade. Yet he disagrees with most in the horse-racing industry on gambling.

While the tracks want gaming only at or near their facilities, Carroll and others - including developers Bill Butler of Covington and John Bays of Owensboro - favor land-based casinos.

Carroll does believe the thoroughbred industry must be included for the issue to make it to the ballot.

He said that could happen if the state allowed casinos as well as racinos, or earmarked a percentage of money generated at casinos to the thoroughbred industry.

"Nothing is going to happen that the horse industry is not involved in," said Carroll, an owner of thoroughbred horses.

"The industry is too important to the state.

Thoroughbred racing in Kentucky - in addition to being the state's unofficial "logo," and the source of international fame as the home of the Kentucky Derby - is a $2 billion a year industry for the commonwealth.

To keep lawmakers from losing sight of that, track interests saw to it that Frankfort's most prominent billboard was emblazoned with the message just in time for the legislative session.

"But the racetracks have stubbed their toe over the last few years (in Frankfort)," he said. "So maybe it's time for a different approach."

A statewide Bluegrass Poll conducted by the Louisville Courier-Journal in early February showed that 79 percent of those surveyed favor the voters, not the legislature, deciding the issue.

But Elliston pointed out that in the same poll, while 51 percent of Kentuckians support gaming at racetracks, the percentage of support dips to 23 percent when they were asked about land-based casinos.

The poll of 804 adults was conducted by phone Feb. 5-10. It carries a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percent.

"Polling suggests ... voters are thinking this is a good idea as long as you stay at the race tracks," Elliston said.

"If you move away from the race tracks and move somewhere else, then that support drops dramatically."

E-mail pcrowley@enquirer.com