Gov. Martin O?Malley said Tuesday he backs a plan to put at least 9,500 slot machines in Maryland, eventually raising more than $600 million a year, with most of the money targeted for education and school construction ? and saving the state?s horse racing industry.
Little of the money would be available soon enough to cure the state?s projected deficit next year.
The governor and his staff refused to release many details, other than to say that it would look very much like a 2005 plan that passed the House of Delegates by one vote. By embracing compromise on that plan, O?Malley is backpedaling on repeated statements over the past two years that he favored only a limited number of slot machines at racetracks, and that he did not want the money used to fund important state functions such as education.
The House bill said the state would pick four locations for slot machines, with only one potential location at an existing racetrack, Laurel Park. The money from that legislation was going to be devoted principally to education, after purses were increased to help the tracks and the horse breeding industry, and after aid was given to local subdivisions. O?Malley would set aside $6 million to treat gambling addiction.
O?Malley emphasized aid to the horse industry by making his announcement at a horse breeding farm in Baltimore County?s bucolic Worthington Valley.
“It?s time to put this debate behind us,” O?Malley said, referring to the contentious failure to pass slots under Gov. Robert Ehrlich. “It?s time to stop sending dollars out of the state of Maryland. The horse farms of Maryland have been hurt very badly at our inability to reach compromise or consensus.”
Labor Secretary Tom Perez, who studied the impact of slot machines in neighboring states, found that Marylanders already were spending $400 million a year playing video lottery terminals [slots] in West Virginia, Delaware and Pennsylvania. He emphasized that 27 percent of the customers for slots in West Virginia are coming from Montgomery and Fairfax (Va.) counties. Montgomery County legislators are some of the fiercest opponents of slot-machine gambling.
“Slots have saved, if not resurrected, the horse racing industry,” Perez said. “This is not about Seabiscuit or sentimentality. This is about survival.”
House Speaker Michael Busch, who did not vote for the 2005 bill, said: “My position on gambling has not changed ? I am not an advocate for slot machines. I don’t think we can expect Marylanders to step up to the plate and pay $2 billion in taxes while unjustly enriching racetrack owners.”
Comptroller Peter Franchot said he was disappointed with the O?Malley slots proposal. “Slots are a regressive tax hitting hardest those who can?t afford it,” he said, “and they will offset the governor?s goal of making our income tax more progressive.”
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