Pro-slots message shifts to education

Horse racing business has taken a back seat

By LIAM FARRELL, Staff Writer

Published 08/17/08

Horses grazed on rolling hills in the background last year as Gov. Martin O'Malley officially announced his administration would pursue slot-machine legislation.

If that event were held now, the backdrop likely would be a crumbling school flanked by trailers, showing outdated books and overcrowded classrooms.

As the pro-slots side shapes its message for the November referendum on slots, the benefits the money could have for horse racing have largely been pushed to the background in favor of a focus on the impact it could have on education funding.

When Mr. O'Malley first outlined his slots plan, which eventually...

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slots - August 18, 2008

It is amazing that elected officials presiding over fiscal and economic issues of great importance STILL don't understand that creating slot parlors is just one step above a state lottery --- which has never been successful in generating widespread fiscal and economic growth. Slot parlors attract the absolute least attractive socio-economic demographic --- poor, working poor, lower middle-class. In effect, you're robbing from those least able to afford to gamble to create tax revenues to fund critical state programs already in distress. And the irony is that many of those who are helping to fund these programs are the ones who end up participating in these entitlement programs. If you want to lure middle-class and more affluent patrons, and provide a more robust tourism and hospitality lure to residents of surrounding states, then we should be approving world-class destination resort casinos --- those facilities generate significant fiscal, economic, tourism and hospitality industry growth. Slot parlors? Guaranteed that eventually, some brighter lights in the state legislature will conclude several years down the road that "hey, we're still losing a significant amount of patrons and dollars to Atlantic City, while our slot parlors are robbing from our own working poor."

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