More News

"Don't believe for a moment that the battle for slots is over. Opponents of slots should be on notice that the big money behind gambling never sleeps, never rests and never stops coming until it grinds the opposition into submission."

— Allan J. Lichtman, The Gazette, April 11, 2003

Barack Obama will win Maryland by a hefty double-digit margin. So the most important vote we will cast on Nov. 4 will not be for president of the United States. Our most important vote will be on the Maryland referendum to amend the state constitution to authorize the placement of 15,000 legal slot machines in various locations in our state.

This is the time for the people of Maryland to stand up for what is right and not allow the big money behind legalized gambling to grind us into submission by besmirching our constitution.

The legalization of slot machine gambling does not provide a painless source of revenue. Rather, such gaming is another form of regressive taxation that preys on the most vulnerable among us. Modern slot machines are ruthlessly efficient money-extracting devices, programmed to guarantee that the players lose and only the house wins. The purveyors of slot machine gambling reap their profits from human misery, inducing people to lose money under the illusion that they are going to win.

Slots are a cash business, difficult to monitor and notoriously subject to corruption and illustrated by bitter experience in Maryland. In the 1960s, Gov. J. Millard Tawes put an end to legalized slot machine gambling on the Eastern Shore because the industry had so thoroughly corrupted local officials.

Rosy estimates of slot machine revenue also fail to take into account offsetting costs. Legalized gambling brings with it increased bankruptcy, alcoholism, family disruption and rising law enforcement costs — the number of police officers per capita in Atlantic City is more than double that of Baltimore city.

Proponents of slots claim that tax proceeds will be used to support education. They've even sold this bill of goods to the state teacher's union, which has endorsed the slots referendum. It would be folly, however, to make funding for education dependent on income from legalized slots.

The experience of other states with legalized gambling highlights serious problems. It is likely that gambling revenues will not expand educational spending, but will only replace other revenues allocated to education. A recent statistical study by S.B. Langley of Auburn University of states that legalized casino gambling found that: "There exists no apparent structural change in state fiscal expenditures on education, public welfare and police protection after the eight states under study legalized commercial casino gambling."

It is also likely that if gambling revenues decline, policymakers will cut back on spending on education rather than reallocate revenue from other priorities. This is particularly true of politically vulnerable higher education. According to a study by the State Higher Education Executive Officers, 11 of the 17 states most dependent on gambling revenues for education had cutbacks in per-full-time-student higher education spending from 2001 to 2006 that exceeded the national average. Only one of these 17 states (Nevada) increased its funding per full-time student during these years.

The economic problems afflicting our nation and state also make this a particularly bad time to legalize slot machine gambling. It is likely that hard times will substantially reduce the estimated returns to the state of any deal with gambling interests. In addition, the costs of excessive gaming and gambling addiction will fall heavily on families and individuals during an economic downturn, expanding the social costs of legalized gambling.

The politics of legalized gambling in our state is also rife with hypocrisy thick enough to spread on bread with a spoon. During the tenure of Republican Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich, Jr. (2003-07), the governor backed legalized slot machine gambling as a major source of funding for education and Baltimore's Democratic Mayor Martin O'Malley derided the idea as "pretty morally bankrupt." Today, Governor O'Malley favors the pro-slots referendum and former Governor Ehrlich has ironically emerged as a critic, saying that the referendum is "bad policy."

So, if you believe anything the politicians tell you about slots, I have a big bridge in my former home of Brooklyn, N.Y., that I would love to sell you, cheap.

Allan J. Lichtman is a professor of history at American University and a national political analyst. He can be reached at lichtman@american.edu.