Rep. Erik Fresen today filed a suite of highly-anticipated gaming bills that would allow three high-end casinos in Miami-Dade and Broward counties.

The 142-page plan(HB 487) creates a seven-member gaming commission and a new state agency – the Department of Gaming Control -that would be responsible for oversight of all gambling ventures in the state except the lottery. Under Fresen’s proposal, the gaming commission would choose who can open casinos in Florida, selecting up to three vendors who promise to bring jobs to the state and spend at least $2 billion, not including the price of the property, to develop and build the “destination resorts.” Bidders would pay $50 million to apply.

Fresen, R-Miami, and Senate sponsor Ellyn Bogdanoff told The Palm Beach Post yesterday that it’s time for lawmakers to step up to the plate and establish a gaming vision for the state instead of the hodge-podge approach gambling-leery lawmakers have taken for decades.

“This is about creating a strategic direction for gaming,” Bogdanoff, a Fort Lauderdale Republican whose district includes part of Palm Beach County, said in a meeting with The Post’s editorial board yesterday evening. “Nobody has taken hold of the gaming issue because nobody wants to touch it. We are an anti-gaming legislature that refuses to deal with this holistically.”

The push for the casinos has spurred the revival of the dormant No Casinos Inc., headed by Orlando PR consultant John Sowinski. Sowinski is joining forces with businesses, faith-based groups and law enforcement officials opposed to the casino proposition.

After the bill was filed, Sowinski issued a press release asking lawmakers to look into a federal investigation into Las Vegas Sands, which is pushing the casino proposal. The Wall Street Journal reported last week that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the U.S. Justice Department in March opened an investigation involving the gambling giant’s Macau’s casinos.

“It’s time to ask the tough questions, not fast-track legislation to build the biggest casinos in the world here in Florida,” Sowinski said in a statement. “Legislators should learn more about this investigation before moving a bill forward. They should also learn more about the enormous social and economic costs that mega-casinos would add to Florida taxpayers’ burden.”

The kind of entertainment you'll find at lexandterry.com.

A syndicated program on a University of Florida radio station that features segments like “Running of the Bums” and “Mental Challenge, ” which asks callers to pick the real “mentally challenged” person, has been targeted by a pair of Florida House lawmakers who are asking college President Bernie Machen to step in and address the “unacceptable” material for a station at taxpayer-funded university.

“It is not our intention to censor positions or views. However, subject matter which is dehumanizing and/or degrading to the physically disabled or offensive to a specific gender or race in unacceptable,” state Reps. Joe Abruzzo, D-Wellington, and Erik Fresen, R-Miami, wrote to Machen. (Read the full letter here.)

The program, Lex & Terry, was originally launched in Jacksonville in 1993 but it now aired out of Dallas, according to the Jacksonville Times-Union. The program recently signed with Clear Channel after splitting with Cox Radio, which owns four radio stations in Florida and whose parent company, Cox Enterprises, also owns The Palm Beach Post.

The program was already canceled once by Machen, who trumpeted the achievement last year in news stories as a sign he was ridding the university of its party school image.

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