Matthew Santoni, The Examiner
2007-10-26 07:00:00.0
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Harford County -

Harford County officials hope that permitting slot machines will benefit the area’s ailing horse-farming industry — as long as the slots are elsewhere in the state.

As legislators prepare for a special session next week where slot machines will be one of many possible solutions to a $1.7 billion deficit, local leaders hope that putting slots at Maryland’s racetracks will increase prize money for horse races and create more demand for local farmers.

“Slots have been on my front burner for a long time,” said Harford County Council President Billy Boniface, who is a co-owner at Bonita Farm in Darlington. “It would benefit Harford County’s efforts at agricultural preservation, because the best farms for preservation are viable farms.”

“Why should we be sending our money to Delaware, West Virginia or Pennsylvania? We’re surrounded here,” said Councilwoman Roni Chenowith. The only reservation she’d have would be if the revenue be designated specifically for school and road construction, rather than going into the state’s general budget, Chenowith said.

Councilman Dion Guthrie, who worked 40 years for a company installing betting equipment at tracks all around the United States and Canada, said the difference in business between tracks with slots and those without was “night and day.” In addition to jobs created for maintaining and operating the machines, the tracks could add more workers to deal with the increase in business that slots would bring, Guthrie said.

If passed, local zoning regulations would prevent slot machines from being installed anywhere in Harford, Boniface said. Instead, their impact would ripple out from the established racetracks through increased state revenues to be spent locally or increased business for horse farms, he said.

Guthrie also emphasized that slots would not have a place in Harford County, as the county’s only track, in Havre de Grace, closed decades ago. He hoped for a “clean bill” that would only permit slots at tracks because previous attempts to expand them to gaming centers and casinos rapidly eroded public support for them.

“When you start talking about other places to put them, that’s when you start losing support,” Guthrie said. “Every year, someone puts in an amendment for casinos, and the whole thing dies.”

Boniface said slots would offer a better solution to the deficit than Gov. Martin O’Malley’s proposed increases in the sales tax and income taxes.

“When people go to play slots, that’s discretionary income they choose to spend ,” Boniface said. “It’s not forcing it on them, like with increased sales tax or income tax.”

msantoni@baltimoreexaminer.com