'It's government working for the people'

by David Grand
August 5, 2004

Those are the most refreshing and uplifting words I've heard coming out of a politician's mouth in a month of Sundays. And by chance, it was on a recent Sunday that Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell signed the 2004-2005 state budget of $23 billion (with no tax increase), along with a pair of bills that legalized slot-machine gambling to finance $1 billion a year in property-tax reductions for homeowners averaging 20 percent, and to help revive the horse-racing industry.      

Like our governor, he'd made legalizing slots the centerpiece of his 2002 election campaign. But unlike Ehrlich, he apparently has a more malleable legislature and no hard-ass, unyielding House leader like the one we're cursed with, who did everything he possibly could, by hook or crook, to prevent his campaign pledge from being realized during the last two sessions.

And from all indications, it looks like he still has a few more tricks up his sleeve for the next session to once again forestall or thwart Ehrlich's slot plans, with the aid of his minions on the House Ways and Means Committee, who when he says "jump" only ask how high.

As regards all that talk we've been hearing about a special session perhaps being called this month to resolve the slots issue, it's just that-so much talk. For Ehrlich and Bush would go along with having one but on their terms: Ehrlich, only if the slots issue would be voted on, or an agreement is reached that it will be immediately put to a vote at the next session; Busch, only if a session was held for the sole purpose of voting on a referendum.

His motive in pushing for that alternative is, of course, as clear as the lines in a wet leaf. For while he's aware that polls show the majority of Marylanders would vote for slots, he's banking on the fact that it would be next to impossible for Ehrlich to muster enough votes in the House he rules with an iron fist to come up with the "super majority" required to amend the Constitution allowing slots at specified locations. Clever rascal, isn't he? But the Comptroller Donald Schaefer is not as kind, calling him a man who's "ac ting like a king and who has no conscience."

While I'm not a masochist, I did indulge in a little self-inflicted pain by using my calculator to figure how many slot machines there are, or will be, in the surrounding states. The Quaker State: 61,000 slots (second only to Las Vegas) at 14 slot-machine parlors, expected to generate $3 billion annually; Delaware: 6,400 at four tracks, which took in $524 million in 2003; West Virginia: 18,000 at four tracks, bars and taverns, which in the first 11 months of fiscal year 2004 raked in $958 million ($743 million from the tracks). And If approved on the November ballot, Washington DC would add an additional 3,500 machines, making an initial total of 104,500 slots siphoning millions out of Maryland (which is currently over $300 million yearly).

When and if Ehrlich and Busch come to a meeting of the minds on a mutually acceptable, gambling bill (with expected revenues of $800 million annually, nearly twice what the state receives from lottery games sold at 3,800 locations), I trust it won't be as generous to license holders as Penn was in giving them 48 percent of the take. And above all, that it doesn't contain a provision similar to theirs that allows lawmakers and other public officials to own 1 percent of the state's 14 slots licenses, shares that could be worth more than $10 million. But there's also no restrictions on officials owning a piece of the gambling companies in Delaware and West Virginia. If that's not a conflict of interest, I don't know the meaning of the term.

And you'd think those so-called public servants who stand to reap such huge profits from their investments would feel morally obligated to return their salaries to the states' coffers. But politics and morality make for strange bedfellows.