2002 - Harness Tracks of America, Inc.

HARNESS TRACKS OF AMERICA
Executive Newsletter
A daily fax and e-mail report on racing and gaming developments in North America and beyond
Stanley F. Bergstein, Editor
HOPES & REALITIES GALORE
Everybody wants VLTs, but everyone isn’t going
to get them. Here’s today’s roundup of hopes and
realities:
In Maryland, the sponsor of a proposal for a constitutional
amendment that would allow slots at
tracks acknowledges that it won’t make it to the
starting gate, given the election-year politicking
facing members of the General Assembly. The
bill, as written, would be exempt from a gubernatorial
veto, but its sponsor, Howard P. Rawlings,
chairman of the House Appropriations Committee,
told the The Capital in Annapolis that “it is important
to lay out the parameters of this discussion”
even if its chances are slim or none this year. The
Senate president, Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr.,
called the bill “a futile gesture” but said ultimately
legalized casino-style gambling in Maryland is “inevitable.”
In Kentucky, casino gambling got a boost from
Larry Dale Keeling, editorial writer for the Lexington
Herald-Leader. He endorsed the idea “for
purely practical reasons. It is fiscal insanity for
this state to sit idly by while hundreds of millions
of Kentucky dollars flow into neighboring states’
economies and treasuries.” Kentucky’s Speaker
of the House, Jody Richards, said in a joint news
conference with the Senate President, David Williams,
that if VLTs come to tracks in Kentucky
“someone would have to police it...some state entity”
and Williams added that it would probably be
the Kentucky Lottery board. He said it was very
doubtful that a separate commission would be
formed. Both Richards and Williams said slot
machines could be legalized only after a constitutional
amendment, not by an ordinary bill, and
added that they did not see much enthusiasm
for the issue in their respective chambers.
Editorialist Keeling had a view on this.
He wrote that until last week he was “one of
January 15, 2002
those naive souls who thought the only way expanded
gambling legislation would get through the
2002 General Assembly was in the form of a constitutional
amendment” and that was conventional
wisdom, but that “conventional wisdom ignores
the reality that, to the true moralists and the falsely
pious (those who think gambling is a sin only if
their church doesn’t get a cut of the action) a vote
for an amendment is the same as a vote to plop
down a Caesar’s Palace clone in every Kentucky
schoolyard. Said vote condemns said legislator to
an eternity without air conditioning or cool, refreshing
beverages. And if (horrors) Kentucky voters
reject the amendment anyway, said legislator loses
any chance of buying himself/herself out of purgatory
by bringing home a piece of the bacon that an
estimated $300 million in extra revenue might
buy.” Keeling went on to write that a mass shunning
by legislators of an invitation to an anti-gambling
meeting (138 were invited and 2 attended)
led him to the conclusion that the dynamics of the
gambling debate changed drastically when the budgetary
good times ended, and that legislators now
feel statutory approval is far preferable to constitutional
revision.
In New Hampshire, the House Ways and Means
committee is reviewing nine gambling-related bills
today, including one that would authorize VLTs at
both dog and horse tracks. Rockingham Park GM
Ed Callahan thinks numerous legislators are in
favor of that measure, “but when you have 400 of
them, sometimes it gets a little difficult.”
In Pennsylvania, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette again
editorially supported track VLTs, saying “the time
is right” for the state to expand gambling at the
state’s four racetracks, since “Pennsylvanians will
spend as much as $3 billion on gaming in neighboring
states” this year.