Whatever Happened to Slots Revenue in Maryland?
Columnist Barry Rascovar offers provocative insights through his Gazette column of February 26th about the failure of Governor Martin O’Malley’s gaming agenda over the past four years.
Once upon a time, revenues from video lottery terminals were viewed as the long-lost revenue source to fund the $1 billion plus increase to education mandated under the Thornton legislation.
In 2003, the slots proposal of Governor Robert L. Ehrlich, Jr., to put video lottery terminals at racetracks throughout the state was based on the profitable models in Delaware and West Virginia. Had it been put into effect seven years ago, there is a high probability that horse racing and slot machine gaming would be well-established and successful today.
But the Democrats in the House of Delegates did not want Ehrlich to have that success. While slot machine gaming passed in the Senate, House Democrats placed politics over policy and rejected outright the slots at racetracks legislation.
O'Malley, then Mayor of Baltimore, advocated against the Ehrlich slots bill calling the proposal "morally bankrupt." ("O'Malley called slots 'morally bankrupt' when Ehrlich proposed using them to finance education initiatives and balance the state's budget." Baltimore Sun, May 6, 2005).
How odd is it that soon after his election, O’Malley quickly turned to gaming as the saviour for his budget-balancing acts? However, revenues have failed to materialize due to a slots program mired in administrative logjams due to O’Malley’s lack of leadership.
To read the Rascovar column at Gazette.net, click here.