Examining Some Slots Specifics

7 comments

September 8, 10:09 AM

by Adam Meister, Baltimore Politics Examiner

 

 

The location of the slots barn (or whatever you want to call it) in Baltimore will be at the gateway south complex near the stadiums, Pigtown, and Russell street.  This location is very close to Federal Hill. I actually ran from Federal Hill to this area last weekend. It was a very quick jog.  Do you think Federal Hill residents will enjoy having a slots barn that attracts all sorts of gamblers right near their neighborhood?   Crime went up in Jefferson country West Virginia after slots arrived there. Federal Hill already has issues with car break ins now, imagine how many people will be trolling Federal Hill for loose change once there are slot machines down the road.

The Baltimore location is also the least lucrative of all the locations. The slot parlor operators will get about 33% of the revenue at each location.  In Baltimore the city will take a large cut of this total through a lease agreement. In theory the money will go to lower our property taxes (that is what we are told now at least).  Why would an operator want to be handicapped like this? This system is doomed to fail and is set up to put the operator in a position beg for subsides in the future or beg for more machines.   This is not a healthy situation.

There are some that say that now that  there is a Democrat Governor that Democrats have become pro-slots and Republicans have become anti-slots. In some cases this is true but we need to look beyond partisan politics to analyze the difference between the Ehrlich and O'Malley proposals.

Ehrlich's plan was a financially optimized plan.  The locations that were included were locations that would bring in the most amount of money.  O'Malley's plan is a politically optimized plan where some locations do not make a lot of economic sense but they do not offend any large county delegations in the general assembly. 

Rocky Gap is a location under the current O'Malley plan.  It is far away and is not an interceptor for Marylanders going to gamble in West Virginia. It is in Allegany county which has very little representation in the general assembly so there was not going to be a lot of political push back for this location.  Ehrlich's plan had a location in Prince Georges County that was going to be very lucrative.  The problem with it is that the Prince Georges delegation in the general assembly is large and powerful and can make a huge political fuss about such a location.

So we are being asked to amend our constitution to allow for slot machines to enter our state in locations that might not maximize revenue. We are being told we need slots in order to fill in state revenue shortfalls and to fund education. One would think we would want to make the most possible money off of every location.  

Finally we need to remember that slot machine math is whatever you want it to be. It can be twisted to fit just about any revenue projection. Predicting numbers of patrons and revenue is basically just a guess, some would say a gamble of sorts. I don't think it is a good idea to get excited about future slots revenue that supposedly will go to our schools and children.  When something seems too good to be true it usual is.  

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