Montgomery and Prince George’s County leaders are hedging their bets on Gov. Martin O’Malley’s proposal to install thousands of slot machines across the state to fund education, school construction and the horse racing industry.
No local elected or school leaders interviewed by The Examiner whole-heartedly embraced O’Malley’s call to install at least 9,500 slot machines across the state in hopes of eventually raising $600 million a year. But most weren’t ready to wholly reject the idea either.
Local leaders were also lukewarm on the governor’s suggestion that the controversial slots issue be put to the Maryland voters in a referendum rather than have legislators decide the matter.
John Erzen, spokesman for Prince George’s County Executive Jack Johnson, said county officials were not against slot machines but were also “not really big on having them in Prince George’s County.”
“There’s definitely a feeling it would not necessarily be a benefit to the county,” Erzen said.
Patrick Lacefield, spokesman for Montgomery County Executive Ike Leggett, said that while Leggett is opposed to slots, he wasn’t ready to rule the idea out entirely.
“[Leggett] has said in order to figure out where we need to be, we need to look at everything that would be on the table to close the $1.7 billion [state budget] deficit,” Lacefield said. “He has asked county legislators to keep their powder dry until we see final tax proposals and how cuts in services could impact Montgomery County.”
Neither Del. Luis Simmons nor County Council MemberGeorge Leventhal kept their powder dry, with both saying they were adamantly opposed to slots.
Sen. Rona Kramer, however, said she could support slots legislation so long as the bill specified a large enough percentage of revenue would come back to the state and to the individual jurisdictions that hosted slots, and there would be control over licenses.
But Kramer said she couldn’t get behind the governor’s idea of a referendum on slots
“I think that’s faulty,” Kramer said. “The bottom line is, we as legislators were elected to make decisions.”
Although O’Malley has said slots revenue would largely go towards education, even county schools spokespeople weren’t publicly backing the measure. Montgomery County Public Schools officials declined to comment on the proposal. Prince George’s schools spokesman John White said district officials don’t take positions on proposed legislation, but they “generally welcome any additional revenue for education.”
