Opinion ID: 1785494
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Local Portion of Gaming Admission Fees.

Text: On November 3, 1992, Missouri voters approved, by referendum, H.B. 149 relating to certain gaming activities. Section 9 of H.B. 149 authorized the Tourism Commission to assess an admission fee of up to $1.00 per passenger on riverboat casinos to be paid into the general revenue. In 1993, the General Assembly enacted S.B. 10 & 11, which established a new regulatory scheme for riverboat gaming in Missouri and explicitly repealed H.B. 149, section 9. The new scheme established by S.B. 10 & 11 allowed the Missouri Gaming Commission to impose a $2.00 admission fee to be collected by the state for each riverboat casino passenger. One dollar of this admission fee was to be remitted to the home dock city or county, and the other dollar was to be deposited in the state treasury to the credit of the Gaming Commission Fund. Secs. 313.820 and 313.835. The Auditor claims that the entire admission fee should be included in TSR while Respondents claim that none of the admission fee should be included. The circuit court correctly found that the half of the admission fees that were paid to the home dock city or county were not included in TSR because they never entered the state treasury. Those fees were not revenue for purposes of TSR. Respondent's contention that the trial court erred by including the other one-half of the fees is based on the theory that S.B. 10 & 11 is a continuation of H.B. 149, the original voter approved admission fee, and that voter approved fees are excluded from TSR under article X, section 16. We need not address this contention because Respondents brought no cross-appeal, perhaps due to the mistaken belief that a cross-appeal was not required because this part of the circuit court's judgment was conditional. As this Court has recognized, however, conditional rulings constitute valid judgments, Anchor Centre Partners, Ltd. v. Mercantile Bank, N.A., 803 S.W.2d 23, 37 (Mo. banc 1991) (reversing an alternative judgment), Noll v. Shelter Ins. Co., 774 S.W.2d 147, 149 (Mo. banc 1989) (discussing with approval the use of conditional rulings), and, as such, must be appealed in the same manner as all judgments.