By Stephanie Samuel

Sentinel Staff Writer

As the November election draws nearer, officials on both sides of the slots referendum are reaching to out to the electorate. Last Thursday slots proponents and opponents came together in the same room to square off in front of Progressive Cheverly members.

State Secretary of Labor, Licenses and Regulation Thomas Perez came out in favor of Gov. Martin O'Malley's plan for five state slot parlors, saying to members that the state is running out of solutions to plug the gaping $1.7 billion hole in the state's budget. He called slots "the third leg" of the governor's plan to pull the state out of a deficit.

In Pennsylvania, which has slot parlors in two counties Perez said, "$1.1 billion was wagered by two counties." Slot proponents such as Perez believe much of that money comes from Maryland residents who go out of state to gamble.

"What we're trying to do here is bring that money home."

Without the additional money that slots could generate, Perez said, "We will get another memo from the governor to cut more things." He says there may also be additional tax increases. However, he warns, "I don't think [residents] have an appetite for any more taxes."

However slots opponents Sen. Paul Pinskey (D-Dist. 22), Sen. David Harrington (D-Dist. 47), Del. Victor Ramirez (D-Dist. 47) and Del. Joanne Benson (D-Dist.24) think slots is just a bad idea all round.

"I think it's fool's gold," Pinsky said.

While slots promise to bring in the big bucks, Pinsky said, "The people who bet don't win, the house wins." And who are the people who will be making the bets? With slot emporiums in Charlestown, W.Va., Pennsylvania and Delaware, Pinsky said of the five proposed parlors, "That's for our folk."

Benson, a Charles County schoolteacher back in 1962, said she remembers when the state first legalized slots.

"It was an unbelievable disgrace," she said. Benson says she recalls children going untended while their parents struggled with gambling addictions. The end result, she says, was deadbeat fathers, domestic abuse and poverty.

"The people who are losing their money cannot afford it," she said.

Benson said the state should find other options to covering its debt such as tackling big businesses that are not paying taxes.

"There are other ways we can do this," she said.

For Rosecroft Raceway CEO Ted Snell, there is no other way. Snell says the passage of the slots referendum means the survival of the horse racing industry in Maryland.

"We need that bill to pass for Rosecroft track and Pimlico," he said. For Snell, slots mean that they can make enough money to bring racing back to the track.

"We're no longer racing live. We're simulcasting,"

Currently, visitors of Rosecroft Raceway in Laurel watch live video footage of horse races at other tracks and place their bets with local traders. All the while the tracks are empty. Snell says money is the issue.

"We actually break even," he says. The money from bets on simulcast races are enough is to keep Rosecroft going. However he says that money does not help the horse handlers and trainers who work with the house horses housed there.

However Pinsky told members of the audience not to buy into the horseracing angle.

"That horse left the barn 40 years ago," he says. "People don't go to watch the horse races anymore."

Pinsky was also skeptical about the amount of high-paying jobs that slot parlors would bring. Perez says of the referendum, "The bill ensures that the jobs created by this will be union jobs." Perez also promised the jobs would pay upwards of $20 an hour. However Pinsky says that slot parlors are "not labor intensive."

"If you think there are gobbles and gobbles of employees making $20 an hour, you're in gaga land," he said.

Slots will be on the referendum during the November general election.

Contact Stephanie Samuel at

ssamuel@thesentinel.com