There they go again on gambling

This comment should shock you:

The study found that 15 percent of Marylanders gamble weekly and spend an average of $549 per month. That amounts to a whopping $6,588 per year!



Allan J. Lichtman: There they go again on gambling

Politicians are so predictable. They almost make it too easy for columnists to skewer them in the pages of The Gazette. On no issue are Maryland politicians more predictable or more vulnerable than on legalized gambling.

During the many years that I have been writing about this issue in Maryland I made several predictions.

First, slot machine parlors would be slow to develop and would not bring in the big bucks that the politicians promised (nearly $700 million yearly). Second, the gambling industry and their flaks among Maryland’s politicians would not stop with legalized slots, but would continue to grind down the opposition until they gained full casino gambling in Maryland.

Sadly, these predictions have come to pass. The implementation of slot machine gambling in Maryland has barely gotten off the ground and has so far brought in only a trickle of revenue. In fact, the state is so far spending more than it brings in.

According to Megan Poinski on MarylandReporter.com, the state already has spent $99 million to purchase 1,825 slot machines for facilities at Perryville and Ocean Downs. It has now apparently given up on buying machines. Instead, the state will lease machines for a new and larger facility at Arundel Mills, with a cost to the taxpayers of some $168 million — for devices that we won’t even own.

Ironically, the failure of slot machine gambling to live up to expectations has led advocates to call not for a reconsideration, but for an escalation in Maryland to full gaming casinos. As always, Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr. is leading the charge.

Not surprisingly, gambling interests are also asking for a bigger share of the take, and Miller is all too eager to oblige them. According to John Wagner in The Washington Post, Miller is preparing legislation that would increase the share of proceeds that casino operators are allowed to keep and would authorize the addition of Las Vegas-style table games, such as blackjack and roulette. Miller (D-Dist. 27) of Chesapeake Beach said operators might be able to keep all proceeds from those new offerings.

Unfortunately, not just Mike Miller but otherwise admirable leaders in our state have fallen victim to the siren song of easy money from legalized gambling. Converts include Montgomery County Executive Isiah Leggett and Prince George’s County Executive Rushern L. Baker III. Baker was elected on a platform of ending the corruption of the discredited Jack Johnson administration. Does he really want to bring the corrupting influence of casinos to his county?

Of course, there is no free lunch on revenue. A 2011 study by researchers at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County and the Schaefer Center for Public Policy found that compulsive gambling is already a problem in Maryland. The study found that 15 percent of Marylanders gamble weekly and spend an average of $549 per month. That amounts to a whopping $6,588 per year!

Such expenditures are fine for people who can afford them and gamble in their private lives. But studies also show that most regular gamblers are people of limited means and that state legalized gambling amounts to a regressive tax on people who can ill afford to pay.

Legalized gambling also can mean more than a leaner wallet. The UMBC and Schaefer Center study concluded that “research findings are generally consistent with the view that increased availability leads to more gambling and problem gambling.” The researchers found that some 3.4 percent of Marylanders are currently problem or pathological gamblers and that such gambling “results in a long list of individual and social dysfunctions.”

In Pennsylvania, which recently adopted casinos, calls to the state’s problem gambling help line jumped by 26 percent in the first quarter of last year, according to the Pennsylvania Council on Compulsive Gambling.

There are some courageous politicians who have resisted the fool’s gold of legalized gambling. Comptroller Peter Franchot cast the lone dissenting vote on the Board of Public Works on spending taxpayer dollars to lease slot machines.

Franchot said he was “appalled that our citizens are forced to pay for these machines that will further enrich gambling companies" and that he remained “disgusted by the fact that we as a state are holding on to this notion that slots are a solution to our fiscal situation.” More of our leaders need to be equally appalled and disgusted.

Allan J. Lichtman is a professor of history at American University and a national political analyst.