Keep slots out of Maryland

An editorial reflects the agreement of at least two-thirds of the Silver Chips Online staff on the issue.

Governor Ehrlich's slot plan has been touted as the only way to rescue education from spiraling state deficits and balance Maryland's toppling budget. In actuality, bringing slots to Maryland will only result in higher crime and social services costs as well as a grossly unfair tax on the state's poor citizens.

"We think it's like a regressive tax because the poor gamble at disproportionate rates," says Sean Dobson, deputy director of Progressive Maryland, a community-based activist group that has lobbied and led a coalition to fight the slots bill. "This particular plan is especially bad because the slots barns are going to be stuck in black neighborhoods so black people will bear the burden of these slots."

According to a recent SUNY-Buffalo study on gambling, those who play slots – and especially pathological, compulsive gamblers – are very disproportionately minorities and poor. Common sense also backs this assumption up: the users of cheap slot machines are almost all those from the lower- and middle-class economic brackets. Instead of having the guts to raise taxes, Ehrlich has chosen the sneaky route – slot machines that will siphon lower- and middle-class money back into the state treasury without angering citizens with a tax hike.

Supporters of the slots bill contend that this is not the case and that slots will bring in much of their revenue from Marylanders who currently gamble just over the border in Delaware. Even if this is true, the number of slot users in Maryland will certainly rise. And the communities that will see tens of thousands more cars each day, as well as increases in crime and the number of gambling addicts, may not be persuaded by that argument. The predominantly working-class and minority Pimlico, Laurel and Roosevelt areas will thus be negatively affected, while Ehrlich has refused plans to put slots in the more affluent, white communities of Ocean Downs and Timonium.

Slot machines will "make money for a bunch of rich Las Vegas moguls and millionaire racetrack owners," says Dobson. While Maryland's regular folks spend their savings at state slots, the racetrack owners will profit to the tune of tens of millions more dollars in profits. These owners include men like Joe DeFrancis, owner of the Pimlico and Laurel racetracks, who is worth more than $117 million. In 1996, DeFrancis was convicted of unlawful campaign donations to Annapolis politicians, for which he received a minor fine and probation.

Also likely to profit are huge corporations and their owners, like J. Terrence Lanni, CEO of the MGM Mirage casino in Las Vegas. In May, Tanni participated in a $400,000 Preakness race celebration – at taxpayer expense of course, according to The Washington Post. Don't forget that while Ehrlich was budgeting hundreds of thousands of dollars for these CEOs, he was cutting millions from the state's education and social services budgets.

Also, there is no question that legalizing slots in Maryland will bring an enormous amount of crime to the state. J. Joseph Curran, Jr., Maryland's Attorney General – the state's top law enforcement officer – is a vociferous opponent of gambling. He wrote and presented a 74-page report entitled "The House Never Loses and Maryland Cannot Win," in which he outlines cases from hundreds of other towns and states that have legalized gambling and the effects on crime rates there. "The experiences of other states paint a grim picture. Casinos would bring a substantial increase in crime to our state," writes Curran.

According to Curran's report, gambling has caused massive crime increases everywhere it has been implemented. Atlantic City experienced a 199 percent rise in its violent crime rate and a 481 percent rise in its larceny rate during the first fifteen years casinos were legal there. Curran firmly believes that any revenue brought in by casinos would be too small and unsteady to make up for the swelling crime rate and social services costs they would also bring. "Casinos would bring us exactly what we do not need – a lot more of all kinds of crime," he states.

Instead of promoting a policy that blatantly benefits Maryland's millionaires and Fortune 500 companies while tying children's education budget to gambling, Governor Ehrlich should take the difficult, but just, step of raising taxes on the wealthiest Marylanders and closing corporate loopholes. The state loses over $208 million annually through corporate tax loopholes, and those are only the losses that are catalogued and counted, according to the Baltimore Sun. Progressive Maryland asserts that the actual losses are much higher, and has published a budget that would raise $1.7 billion, almost enough to close the budget gap – without legalized gambling or raising middle class taxes.

The slots plan is just another break for fat cats who already have it easy, and it is the easy way out for politicians who want to avoid the hard but necessary steps to truly solve Maryland's budget problems. Trying to finance education with gambling is wrong. A plan that gives millions of dollars to rich track owners who force slots into working-class, minority areas – a move that they know will increase crime – is wrong. Simply put, Ehrlich's entire slots plan is wrong for Maryland.

Attorney General Curran's report can be read here.