Pondering Pastor

The New Slots Polls

Posted by Pr. Lee Hudson, director, Lutheran Office on Public Policy/MD

Why are opponents annoyed, but not discouraged by the Post and Sun surveys that seem to show strong support for slots among Marylanders? Mostly because the poll results didn’t tell us anything new.

Two Governors have spent five years using “crisis,” “slots,” and “free money” in the same sentences. It’s hardly surprising that people have trouble with the facts. It’s also a testament to the power campaign cash has to shape public discourse.

Opponents are annoyed that their corresponding lack of money means proponents get free press that also is fact- and debate free. The most annoying thing about the polls isn’t that the results were inconvenient. It’s that confusion is a preferred policy because it works.

Had the polls asked whether Marylanders support slots if they aren’t an alternative to revenues (which is the case) the results would have been different. There is no ground swell for slots except when the State executive skillfully proposes them as revenue.

When the polls actually ask, as the recent ones did, whether support for slots means willingness to accept them into the local community, the answer remains “no.” That question has been the impediment to slots so far. There’s support for slots until the locations are named. Support then turns to controversy. The current Governor has maneuvered around this issue by leaving the site question for another time and another process.

What the polls showed is that Marylanders prefer slots to taxes. We didn’t need a poll to tell us that. That slots aren’t a substitute for taxes hasn’t been brought up. The poll results show that Marylanders like slots more than a sales tax increase. But the one certainty is that there will be a sales tax increase of some kind no matter what else is or isn’t done. That’s because the sales tax will actually raise new revenue, and the largest amount of it. Slots won’t raise any.

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A letter from the Lutheran Office of Public Policy in Maryland

ELCA advocacy in Maryland encourages our churches to become involved in active, public opposition to the proposal to introduce state-sponsored gambling as a public revenue policy. The coalition opposed to this proposal, STOPSLOTS, has designated Saturday, October 20th for a series of state-wide rallies against slots.

There will be four sites around the State for regional opposition. This is important because every part of the state will get slots parlors if the gambling proposal succeeds. Below are location sites and contact information for the rallies.

Please pass this information along to your networks and contact the coordinators for details.

Thank you for your partnership in ELCA advocacy in Maryland

Lee Hudson
LOPP/MD
1) Prince George’s County: Minor Carter will act as coordinator for this event. The location will be the First Baptist Church of Glenarden. I have been told that the capacity there is 4,000 people.

2) Eastern Shore: Melanie Pursel from the Ocean City Maryland Chamber of Commerce will be coordinating. The location is still TBA.

3) Western Maryland: Bill Valentine will be coordinating the effort in the west. He is arranging a location.

4) Baltimore City: I will be handling this event myself. There is a possibility that we may move this event to noon to allow speakers to move from the PG event up to Baltimore. Location is TBA.

As our Governor and legislative leaders anticipate a budget shortfall, once again the near “magic bullet” of gambling appears to be a significant portion of a solution.  This is a bad idea.

I’ve watched a number of states that I’ve lived in look to gambling in its many different forms as a solution to budget woes.  In each one, within a few short years, actual revenue has fallen short of projections and the gambling lobbyists encourage the expansion of gambling.  Limits gradually get pushed aside.  (Witness what recently happened in Mississippi after Hurricane Katrina.  Casinos were required to be on barges in the Gulf of Mexico and after Katrina, when several had been lifted by the storm and placed on land, the legislature decided to allow them to be inland.  In West Virginia, slots are gradually giving way to “table games”.  In Iowa, horse racing and dog racing gave way to riverboats and slots.  In Pennsylvania, the lottery has given way to slots.)

Additionally, consider the following for Maryland.

• Revenue shortfall is occurring now.  Income from gambling, even if enacted now, will not come until up to 4 years later.
• Slots in Maryland as proposed will shift more than a half a billion dollars of revenue burden onto three of the poorest jurisdictions in the state.  (That seems a lot like using the poorest counties in West Virginia for landfill sites for New York City.)
• Slot proceeds are not new revenue, they are re-allocated spending from other sources and negatively impacts sales taxes.
• Slots are inelastic.  They do not grow with the economy.  They have to be expanded to continue to maintain the revenue level.  This puts the State of Maryland in business with an exploitive industry which has the goal of creating more gamblers who will lose more money.
• Studies have shown that there is an increase in social service costs associated with this particular revenue stream.  Crime, poverty, foreclosures, divorce rates, and bankruptcies all increase with expanded gambling.

There is more, but that is enough for the time being.

Pondering Pastor