And so the inevitable came to pass, which is to say that to the surprise of exactly no one, legislators in Pennsylvania and Maryland have advanced proposals to rob Peter to pay Paul. Peter, in this case, being horse racing and Paul being whatever it is that enjoys current political favor. In Maryland those funds …
Category Archive: slot machines
Nov 03 2010
Maryland quote du jour
As perhaps you’ve already seen, voters in Anne Arundel County, Maryland, have approved Question A. In plain English, this means: No slots at Laurel Park. Instead, the slot machines will go to Arundel Mills Mall. A 20-year fight by the Maryland racing industry to obtain slot machines ends with both smashing victory and abject defeat, …
Feb 13 2009
Striking out on one pitch
It took Maryland racing more than a decade of work to convince the state to allow slot machines. It took Magna Entertainment, parent company of state track owners the Maryland Jockey Club, several million dollars to support the pro-slots campaign. And it took Magna just a week to get itself disqualified from the bidding for …
Feb 03 2009
Competitive? Not so much
For a competitive process, the bidding for slot machine licenses in Maryland is not going to involve much actual competition. On Monday, just six bidders applied for the five available licenses. As a result, in just one of the locations will there be actual competition. Of course, in a development that has to be causing …
Jan 14 2009
MJC 2008 numbers: Ouch!
Ken Gibson, one-time mayor of Newark, NJ — the nation’s first African-American big city mayor — once proclaimed, “Wherever American cities are going, Newark will get there first.” He turned out to be exactly right — just not in the way he imagined. Through the testing times of the 1970s and 1980s, Newark came to …
Nov 05 2008
Election night
A bunch of emails arrived in my inbox last night at around the same time with the exact same subject line: Slots! I haven’t exactly hidden my feelings on the issue of slot machines in Maryland, and last night — after a decade-plus of the legislature’s inability to resolve the issue — the voters of …
Oct 31 2008
That slots post: Yes on 2
On Tuesday, voters nationwide will make major decisions regarding the future of our country. In the horse racing world, none of those decisions will be more important than the one that Maryland voters will make: whether or not to allow slot machines in the Free State. The Washington Post and its anti-slots pals have kept …
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