Struggle over gambling heats up in Maryland

Gretchen Parker

Thursday, Feb. 10, 2005 | 9:36 a.m.

ANNAPOLIS, Md. -- Bills to legalize slot machines will get an early hearing this session from a House committee, but the airing comes with no promises on whether Gov. Robert Ehrlich's fight for slots will succeed.

The House Ways and Means Committee has killed the governor's slots bill for two straight years; last year the vote came on the final day of the General Assembly's 90-day session. The panel has scheduled a hearing on Feb. 16, when committee members will hear testimony from both sides of the slots debate.

Leaders won't say when Ehrlich's bill may come to a vote in that committee, although House Majority Leader Kumar Barve implied Wednesday that it would be early in the session.

"I think there's a desire to deal with this sooner rather than later in the House, in the hope that we can act and move onto other issues," said Barve, a Montgomery County Democrat.

House Speaker Michael Busch, whose opposition to slot machines has been critical, has been noncommittal about the fate of the governor's bill.

On the Senate side Wednesday, Ehrlich made his third appearance in three years to testify for his bill in the Budget and Taxation Committee. In 2003 and 2004, the Democratic-controlled panel and the full Senate approved slots legislation.

Ehrlich appeared before the committee at the invitation of Democratic Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller, who has vowed the Senate will approve slot machine bills again this year. The two sat beside each other as they spoke to senators.

"This is not a partisan issue," Ehrlich told the committee, thanking them for their support of slots. "Clearly, the votes are here for this bill on this committee and on the floor of the Senate."

His proposal for legalizing up to 15,500 slot machines is identical to the one he introduced a year ago, except that as much as $150 million a year would be designated for school construction. The construction money is intended to be an inducement to win votes in the House.

"Think about the dollars we would have available if we'd passed this bill two years ago," Ehrlich told the committee.

The bill would authorize 3,500 slot machines each at Laurel, Pimlico and Rosecroft racetracks and 1,000 machines at a track that has been approved to be built in Allegany County. Two off-track slots parlors with a combined total of up to 4,000 machines could be built at two locations along the I-95 corridor in Baltimore city and Prince George's, Anne Arundel, Howard, Cecil, Harford and Baltimore counties.

The committee room was filled with supporters of Ehrlich's proposal. Union members wore red shirts with the logo "Marylanders for Good Jobs." Several employees from Pimlico and Laurel racetracks testified that jobs have been cut from their venues, as the horse racing industry struggles and waits for slot machines to be legalized.

Slots opponents, who for the last two years have packed legislative hearings, were noticeably absent from Wednesday's session. Stop Slots Maryland organizers held a news conference earlier in the day to announce they were boycotting the committee, because of the panel's certain approval of the legislation.

"One thing we've learned is we're not getting a fair hearing in Annapolis. It's very frustrating to us to bring in people from miles away and wait hours and hours to speak, when they're not being heard," said Aaron Meisner, coordinating chairman of the group. "We're not going to go through it again for a charade."