Four Montgomery County Council members will urge residents today to vote against legalizing slot machine gambling in Maryland, but neither of the county’s top two elected officials will be standing with them.
County Executive Ike Leggett, long known as a slots foe, says he will soon reveal his position on the November ballot referendum that would add 15,000 slot machines at five Maryland racetracks. He suggests he will likely become a slots supporter this fall.
“The state’s $750 million, maybe $1 billion deficit is real, and I challenge people opposed to slots to tell me their solution,” Leggett said. “What is the solution to the challenge we face? Give me another viable option. I have not seen one so far.”
Last fall, Maryland legislators voted to raise the state sales tax from 5 percent to 6 percent and increase the income tax rate for people who earn $150,000 a year or more.
Rejecting slots will require the state to either increase taxes again — an unlikely event, as residents, and Gov. O’Malley’s approval ratings, are still reeling from last year’s tax increases — or slash programs.
“We’ve gone through all this, we’ve done all those options and we didn’t have the downturn in the economy that we have now,” Leggett said. “What are the other options?”
Council President Mike Knapp said he is “somewhat ambivalent” on slots, but upset with the message that they will solve Maryland’s budget woes because the revenue they’d generate is not expected to line the state’s coffers for three years.
“If people are going to spend money on slots, I’d rather have them spend it here than elsewhere,” Knapp said. “There is a big budget problem now, though, and slots won’t kick in for three years — at best they make a big problem a little smaller. Slots won’t even keep us even.”
Council Vice President Phil Andrews and Council members Duchy Trachtenberg, George Leventhal and Marc Elrich will join state legislators, Rockville Mayor Susan Hoffman and Takoma Park Mayor Bruce Williams in a rally against slots today.
Leventhal said his opposition stems from a 1995 report authored by former Attorney General J. Joseph Curran Jr. that studied how slot machines have affected other parts of the United States and concluded that “a vote for casino gambling is a vote for more crime in Maryland.”
“If you let legalized gambling in, you’ll get with it increased crime, increased corruption, increased domestic violence, increased bankruptcy and increased child neglect,” Leventhal said. “Why would we invite all these things into our state?”
