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LITTLE ROCK -- The Arkansas Racing Commission on Wednesday approved an order regarding its July denial of an applicant's appeal of the commission's decision to award the license for a new casino in Pope County to the Gulfside Casino Partnership. The 27-page document outlines the commission's findings of fact and conclusions of law regarding the July 30 3-2 vote to deny the appeal by Oklahoma-based Cherokee Nation Businesses' Legends Resort and Casino LLC. The commission Wednesday also approved an order with seven pages of findings of fact and conclusions of law for the commission's July 30 ruling that Legends Resort and Casino LLC is a qualified applicant for the Pope County casino license. The Racing Commission also decided to enter into the record about 1,400 pages of emails and several invoices from its casino consultant, Jim Fox of Fox & Fox Consulting, that Legends Resort and Casino LLC's attorneys obtained under the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act.

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Legends Resort and Casino LLC promised to appeal the actions while Gulfside wants to move forward with construction. With commissioner Alex Lieblong of Conway absent, commissioners Bo Hunter of Fort Smith, Michael Post of Altus, Denny East of Marion, Mark Lamberth of Batesville, Steve Landers of Little Rock and Butch Rice of Beebe participated in Wednesday's 10-minute meeting by telephone. The commissioners made their decisions in voice votes.

In the commission's July 30 meeting, Hunter, Post and East voted to deny the appeal by Legends Resort and Casino LLC of the commission's June 18 decision to award the Pope County license to the Gulfside Casino Partnership, while Lamberth and Landers dissented. Lieblong and Rice didn't attend that July 30 meeting at which the other commissioners voted to toss out Lieblong's and Rice's scores of the companies. After the commission's 10-minute meeting Wednesday, Casey Castleberry, counsel for Gulfside Casino Partnership, said in a written statement that "we are moving forward with our plans to build our first-class River Valley Casino Resort, an entertainment and economic destination for Russellville, Pope County and the state." Dustin Mc Daniel, an attorney representing Cherokee Nation Businesses' Legends Resort and Casino LLC, said Wednesday in a written statement that "our Administrative Procedures Act appeal will be filed soon, and it will highlight the points addressed in the Objections and Orders entered.

"The commission violated its own rules governing acceptance and scoring of license applications, disregarded the analysis of its outside consultant who said that Legends was the superior applicant in every respect, unlawfully altered the scores rendered by its review panel, and overlooked substantial evidence that Gulfside and its owners intentionally withheld evidence of their past bankruptcies, criminal investigations, and ineligibility for licensure in Mississippi," he said in a written statement. In addition, Mc Daniel said "the presence of Commissioner Rice at today's meeting was surprising and inappropriate. "We have no way of knowing whether he attempted to vote, as they were all voice votes," he said. State Department of Finance and Administration spokesman Scott Hardin said that "while Commissioner Rice was on the call listening to the meeting, he did not vote or participate in the discussion." On June 18, the seven commissioners selected Gulfside to build and operate a casino in Pope County based on their total score of 637 for Gulfside compared with 572 for the Cherokees. Rice gave Gulfside a score of 100, compared with 29 for the Cherokees.

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The 71-point difference in his totals was larger than the difference in the commissioners' scores overall. On June 22, the other six commissioners' voted to find that Rice was biased. Lieblong decided to recuse from the July 30 meeting and withdraw his scores, saying in a letter that he wanted to "avoid any appearance of impropriety and remove any doubts as to the integrity of either myself or this process." On June 27, Gulfside attorney Lucas Rowan questioned whether a text exchange between Lieblong and Mc Daniel after the June 22 meeting represented possible collusion.

But Hardin, speaking for Lieblong at that time, rejected the suggestion of collusion. Lieblong had the second-largest difference among his scores on June 18.   He gave the Cherokees a score of 95, compared with 73 for Gulfside.  

After Lieblong and Rice's scores were tossed out, the final scores were 464 for Gulfside and 448 for the Cherokees, according to Hardin. Fox issued a report dated July 20 naming Cherokee Nation Businesses' proposal as the best pick.

Gulfside proposed a 4 million casino and resort with 1,900 slot machines, 90 table games and 500 hotel rooms near Russellville north of I-40, with additional investment and rooms within five years. The Cherokees proposed a 5 million casino and resort with 1,100 slot machines, 32 table games and 200 hotel rooms, also north of I-40 near Russellville. Gulfside and the Cherokees were the final two Pope County casino license applicants standing after all five original applications -- including them -- were rejected by the Racing Commission in the first application period in 2019.

Race Dates Oaklawn Racing Casino Resort - Since 1904.

All five were rejected because none of them met the commission's rules then in place requiring endorsements from local elected officials at the time of the application's filing. Endorsements of local elected officials are required for new casinos under state Constitutional Amendment 100. Amendment 100, approved by voters in 2018, authorized the expansion of gambling operations at racetracks in Hot Springs and West Memphis into full-fledged casinos, as well as casinos in Jefferson County and Pope County. However, the amendment doesn't specify that endorsements must come from current elected officials. In 2019, Pulaski County Circuit Judge Tim Fox ruled unconstitutional the commission's rule and a state law with the same requirement. Gulfside sued the Racing Commission because its application contained endorsements from local elected officials who had left office in December 2018. The Cherokees resubmitted their application after being endorsed by the Pope County Quorum Court in August 2019.

In June 2019, the commission awarded the Jefferson County license to Oklahoma-based Downstream Development Authority of the Quapaw Nation. In October 2019, the commission voted to transfer the license to Saracen Development.