Wednesday, March 26, 2003 | 9:33 a.m.
MATAPEAKE, Md. -- Shirley Hebb watched as her $20 bill turned into $100 in quarters, making a euphonic racket as they poured out of the slot machine.
"I have some of their money," Hebb joked with a smile. "That don't happen all the time. Mostly, they get mine. It's always being here at the right time."
In this case, the house paying out to the Annapolis resident is not a casino in Las Vegas or Atlantic City. It's not even in neighboring West Virginia or Delaware, where slots are legal at racetracks. It's the Kent Island Elks Lodge 2576.
While Gov. Robert Ehrlich dukes it out with the General Assembly over his plan to install 11,500 slots at four horse tracks, Marylanders already are dropping quarters into a couple hundred slot machines within the state's borders.
If you are a member of the fraternities of Moose or Elks, or you're a military veteran who belongs to the American Legion or the VFW, scores of slots await on the Eastern Shore under an exception to the law enacted in 1987 under then-Gov. William Donald Schaefer.
It's the last vestige of slots in a state that briefly authorized them statewide in the late 1930s. In the 1940s, they were legal in the southern Maryland counties of Calvert, Charles, St. Mary's and in Anne Arundel County. By the early 1960s, slot machines in those counties were the only legal ones in the United States outside Nevada. Maryland banned slots in 1968.
The current exception applies to nonprofits that are bona fide fraternal organizations and veterans organizations in the counties of Caroline, Cecil, Dorchester, Kent, Queen Anne's, Somerset, Talbot and Wicomico. Worcester County, which has opposed allowing slots at the Ocean Downs racetrack because it wants to maintain a family atmosphere at its Atlantic Ocean beaches, does not fall under the exception.
Any qualified organization pays a $50 license fee to own up to five slot machines. The organization must give at least half the proceeds to charity; the remainder may go to the organization's operations.
Seizing on the governor's pro-slots momentum, Delegate George Owings, D-Calvert, is seeking to spread that bounty to American Legion and VFW halls across the state. At the behest of a joint commission representing the two groups, Owings has introduced a bill this year to do just that. The last time such an expansion was proposed was more than a decade ago.
"I think the commission felt as long as there was slots back on the table, this was the year to do it," said Owings, himself a member of the two veterans' organizations.
The bill is on hold in the House Ways and Means Committee until the fate of Ehrlich's slots plan becomes clearer. Taking action on it now "muddies the water" on that larger, more controversial proposal, Owings said.
The state comptroller's office records show a total of 308 slot machines were plugged in at 49 organizations in those eight Eastern Shore counties during the fiscal year that ended in June. The numbers don't work out to five per lodge because some machines are replaced during the year.
The slot machines are equipped with a tamperproof meter or counter that records gross receipts. Sheriffs in each county check the meters several times a year. Each club also reports to the sheriff the annual income of each slot machine and where that money is distributed.
"(The lodges) have to maintain scrupulous books and there's never been a problem with them to my knowledge," said Tom Davis, the department adjutant of the American Legion Department of Maryland.
"You can't really fudge anything. The readings are all there," said Raymond "Skip" Stokes, the incoming Exalted Ruler at the Kent Island Elks Lodge.
A few years after declaring them legal on the shore, Schaefer ordered an investigation into the proceeds that did not uncover any wrongdoing.
Records also are sent to the state comptroller's office, but because regulation occurs on the county level there are no cumulative state figures tallying the totals.
However, the comptroller's records show that more than $1 million is dropped into slots at many outlets. Almost $5.5 million was dumped into five machines at one VFW post in Cecil County in the last fiscal year. Payouts at that club came out to more than $5.2 million, leaving a net of $247,000 -- and half of that goes to charities.
Despite the hefty figures involved, Queen Anne's County Sheriff Charles F. Crossley Jr., said he has not found any irregularities with the accounting or other problems associated with the slots, other than occasional malfunctions of the machines themselves. As for gambling causing addiction or other social problems such as bankruptcies that slots opponents worry about, Crossley says he hasn't seen any evidence of that.
"I'm not saying that some people who play the slot machines aren't hooked on them, but it's not something that becomes common knowledge," Crossley said.
Meanwhile, local charities across the Eastern Shore such as volunteer fire departments, Little Leagues, college scholarships, food banks and veterans' hospitals reap the benefits of tens of thousands of dollars in net profits.
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