ANNAPOLIS – Gov. Martin O’Malley needs to make an effort now to drum up support for a gambling expansion in Maryland, Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr. said after meeting with O’Malley and House Speaker Michael Busch.
Miller, D-Calvert and Prince George’s, and Busch, D-Anne Arundel, said some progress was made in a meeting with the governor for breakfast Tuesday morning to discuss negotiations on gambling that have spilled well into the summer and long past the General Assembly’s regular 90-day session.
O’Malley indicated an eagerness to “get [gambling] behind us.”
“I think the broad parameters for what we need to do are pretty apparent to most people, and I think that there is still a strong opportunity to resolve this issue and to do it sooner rather than later,” O’Malley said at a manufacturing event in Cockeysville.
Busch was less revealing in his comments after leaving the breakfast meeting.
“We just sat in there and tried to make an assessment of where we thought people were in the middle of the summer, and we came really to no conclusions, and that was about it,” Busch said while leaving the governor’s mansion. “And the breakfast was delicious.”
Lawmakers have been unable to reach a consensus on gambling — including adding a sixth state casino in Prince George’s County — that the governor wants before he calls a special session.
But now O’Malley places the odds of calling a special session before a mid-August deadline at better than 50/50.
Those odds would improve if the governor lobbies delegates to vote for legislation that would allow Maryland voters to approve or deny gambling expansion on ballots in November.
“There are people that need to be asked. Harry Truman as president said the toughest job he had as president is asking people to vote for something they ought to be able to vote for without having to be asked,” Miller said. “We need some elbow grease, we need some hard work, and we need some elected officials to humble themselves and ask.”
He later added: “If a person like the chief executive calls you up to his office, that makes a big difference.”
O’Malley’s meeting with the leaders of the General Assembly came a day after he met with top officials from Baltimore, Prince George’s County and Montgomery County on gambling, all of whom support an expansion of gambling.
Meetings among members of the House of Delegates and other state leaders will continue for the next few days, O’Malley said.
Senate Minority Leader E.J. Pipkin, R-Eastern Shore, issued a statement describing O’Malley efforts to call a special session as ” a frantic effort toward making hurried and disastrous decisions.”
