(Update)Phillip Rawls, ASSOCIATED PRESS
MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) – The planned reopening of VictoryLand casino in Macon County could come without liquor.
State Attorney General Luther Strange is asking Alabama’s liquor control board to deny a liquor license for the casino. In a letter to the board, Strange said VictoryLand has a history of violating laws against illegal gambling. He also wrote that a state constitutional amendment allowing bingo in Macon County “doesn’t even mention the word ‘electronic’ nor does it allow the use of any electronic device to play bingo.”
A spokesman for the ABC Board, Capt. Hal Taylor, said Monday the board had been on the verge of issuing a license when it got the attorney general’s letter Friday and that stopped the process. He said whenever anyone protests an application for a liquor license, the matter goes before a commission of ABC Board employees to decide. The agency is talking with the attorney general’s office and VictoryLand to try to schedule a mutually agreeable date, and Taylor said it’s too early to know when that might be. He said it won’t be scheduled with any other hearings because it is likely to be lengthy.
If VictoryLand owner Milton McGregor doesn’t like the commission’s decision, he can appeal to the three-member ABC Board, which is appointed by the governor, and then take the matter to circuit court, Taylor said.
McGregor’s attorney, Joe Espy, said Thursday that McGregor hoped to reopen his casino by Christmas but it will definitely happen by the end of the year. The attorney was reviewing the developments Monday and planned to issue a statement later.
VictoryLand, 15 miles east of Montgomery in Shorter, was once Alabama’s largest casino with more than 6,000 machines. McGregor closed it in 2010 under pressure from the state’s gambling task force. He was acquitted of federal bribery charges in March and set out to reopen his casino. He recently installed 1,200 machines, and Macon County Sheriff David Warren, who regulates bingo in the rural county, declared last week that they are legal electronic bingo.
Since shutting down the casino in 2010, VictoryLand has continued to offer simulcast horse and dog races. That part of the complex has a liquor license, but the simulcast area is separate from the sprawling casino gaming rooms at VictoryLand. Taylor said the new liquor license sought by VictoryLand would allow it to serve liquor in the one portion of its casino that it is reopening and in other portions of the casino if they are reopened later.
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press.
