Last on the ballot, first in significance?

Voters to decide on slots

Friday, Oct. 31, 2008

Now, it's in voters' hands. The last question on the ballot may have the greatest impact on citizens in the years to come with hundreds of millions of dollars hanging in the balance. Some may say it will have more impact, at least in this state, than who resides in the White House the next four years.

"If we end up with significant cuts coming back to us, that will have a significant negative impact on the progress we have been able to make in the last eight to 10 years," said St. Mary's County Commissioner Thomas A. Mattingly Sr., who ticked off a laundry list of initiatives that could lose funding if the constitutional amendment fails.

Many local leaders, including the Maryland Association of Counties, fear they could bear the brunt of the economic burden if slots are shot down. State lawmakers have indicated shifting teacher pension costs to the counties is a possibility, even if slots pass, to fill a massive hole in revenues caused by the national economic downturn.

Slots proponents have used the sluggish economy as its primary selling point, even though significant revenues will not start to flow into state coffers until fiscal year 2013. Installing 15,000 devices in five locations across Maryland will generate more than $600 million annually for education, the horse racing industry and a host of other programs, they say.

Reject slots and steep reductions will follow, said Diana Saquella, government relations director for the Maryland State Teachers Association, which has endorsed the constitutional amendment.

"If slots don't pass, I'm not sure we want to even think about the kind of cuts that are coming," she said.

But opponents argue slots are not a cure-all to the state budget ills and will have minimal immediate impact.

"The fiscal times where we find ourselves indicate that the Maryland legislature find the best deal possible for the citizens of Maryland," said House Minority Leader Anthony J. O'Donnell (R-Calvert, St. Mary's), who believes the slots licenses are being given away at a fraction of their value under the proposed plan. "… People feel like they're being sold a bill of goods."

He, like other detractors, also opposes the placement of slot machine gambling in the state constitution.

A man attending the state American Legion convention this summer in Ocean City made that case to Sen. Roy P. Dyson (D-St. Mary's, Calvert, Charles), which he conveys to those who ask his opinion on the ballot question.

"This is a supreme document," he said. "No one is above this. … Is this really something that you want in your constitution?"

In Southern Maryland, voters' choices may be colored by the region's past association with gambling. Five decades ago, it was a slots mecca on the Eastern seaboard, with gaming parlors lining major thoroughfares.

When the last machines were removed in 1968, they had become a stain that ruined countless families and left the region's economy in tatters. Those memories could lead voters to oppose slots, O'Donnell suggested, even though the nearest gaming hall would be in Anne Arundel County.

Others are bitter over the state's decision earlier this year to ban electronic bingo machines in Maryland, which hurt nonprofits that relied on the game for additional revenue after they proliferated in St. Mary's County in the past year. Lawmakers, fearing that operators were taking too high a percentage of the revenues and concerned that such machines could eat into slots profits, outlawed the practice, enraging some nonprofit leaders.

"There will be some backlash from that," said Mattingly (D). "A lot of people don't agree with the way it was taken on."

Some voters already seem to have made up their minds on the issue and even favor higher taxes to slots.

"My feeling is slots [are] a burden on the people who can least afford it," said Lizette Day of Hollywood. "I know everybody thinks taxes are the devil's work, but there has to be some alternative."

"We should be above this sort of thing," St. Clement Shores resident Pat White said of gambling.

But it's hard to play down the benefits that proponents say slots will bring. About half of the proceeds will be directed to education. License holders will get to keep one-third of all revenues, with the balance split between local communities, the horse racing industry and minority business programs.

Opponents point to the social consequences of gambling — higher crime, broken families and widespread addiction — as reason to reject the referendum.

O'Donnell hopes voters defeat the referendum, enabling lawmakers to come back during the 2009 General Assembly and pass a better bill, but legislative leaders have indicated that it would be difficult to push a slots bill if voters turn it down.

The other referendum

While slots has garnered nearly all the attention, a second critically important statewide referendum on early voting will also be on the ballot.

If approved, three designated polling places in each county would open up to 10 days before Election Day. Supporters argue that it will decrease long lines and make it more convenient for voters to cast ballots, while opponents argue that it invites fraud and is too costly. Republicans also allege that it is politically motivated to get more Democrats to vote in a state where they already enjoy a 2-to-1 voter registration edge.

The constitutional amendment was passed along partisan lines shortly after the state's highest court upheld a lower court ruling that legislation to open polls a week before the election was unconstitutional.

Dyson pointed to this year's primary election as a reason to institute early voting. A massive ice storm left Annapolis in gridlock, and many state lawmakers and other residents were unable to cast a ballot even after voting hours were extended by 90 minutes.

Still, opponents contend that absentee balloting is available to any voter who doesn't want to take that risk and early voting is more a political ploy than a democratic action.