The winners may shift, but the losers remain the same

Friday, May 9, 2008

A St. Mary’s judge made at least some of the machines legal again last week, overruling the interpretation of a Maryland assistant attorney general. That interpretation in March suggesting the machines were illegal conflicted with the earlier advice of St. Mary’s County’s prosecutor that permitted them to proliferate in the first place. The prosecutor’s advice relied on a 2001 appeals court ruling to say they were OK.

The legal complexities are enough to make a person’s head spin, but don’t spend too much time trying to figure it all out. The machines may be gone again by July 1, if the governor signs a law that most interpret as banishing them for good.

And here’s the punch line. Among the prime movers behind the law that would rid St. Mary’s of these gambling machines once and for all are the same elected officials most intent on bringing 15,000 slot machines to five locations elsewhere in the state – the governor and the president of the Maryland Senate.

So who are the heroes and the villains in all this? That’s probably not the right question. Let’s face it, it’s hard to find the moral high ground in a swamp.

This is all about money – how to separate gamblers from it as quickly as possible and then how to redistribute it. And as in any scheme for the redistribution of wealth there are winners and losers. When the machines were running essentially unregulated a few months ago in St. Mary’s, the winners included charities and parochial schools, as well as restaurant, bar and liquor store owners who increased their business and got a cut of the proceeds for hosting the devices. The biggest winners, though, were the people from outside St. Mary’s who actually owned the machines, and who pocketed about half of the proceeds.

One of the reasons state officials have been intent on shutting down the gambling machines in St. Mary’s is because they aren’t sure they’ve been getting their cut; that taxes were being paid on all of the proceeds. Another reason is the state’s plan to run its own gambling operation – or rather expand it. As Judge Karen Abrams noted last week, the state’s already heavily involved in running gambling in the state. The lottery is what used to be called a numbers racket before the state took it over nearly 40 years ago.

The advocates for the state’s plan to run slot machines, if approved in a voter referendum, argue that the winners then will be the taxpayers. This will fund schools and other government functions without raising taxes yet again, they argue. It’s a pitch that has won the endorsement of groups like the Maryland State Teachers Association and the Maryland Chamber of Commerce.

So if the winners from the gambling machines in St. Mary’s included the charities here and the winner if slot machines go in elsewhere will be the state government, who are the losers? The answer to that is always the same. The losers are the great majority of the people who walk into the slot machine hall and empty out their wallets and line up at the ATM machines for more. And in a more indirect way, the losers include the nearby merchants where the money lost might have been spent on goods and services.

Gambling is an ever more widely accepted form of entertainment for those who can afford it and know when to quit. It’s a disaster for those who don’t. That’s the one thing that will not change no matter who is collecting the money dumped into the machines or where they are located.