Instead, members approve push for statewide referendum
A divided Prince George’s County Council put off voting on a bill that would ban slots from the county, and instead pushed for a statewide referendum to settle the issue.
The council tabled the slots ban legislation by a 5-4 vote Tuesday. The bill, introduced by Councilman Eric Olson, D-Bowie, would use the county’s zoning authority to eliminate the possibility of slot machines operating in any area of Prince George’s.
Rather than kill the bill, five council members, led by Chairwoman Ingrid Turner, D-Bowie, passed an eleventh-hour resolution calling for a statewide referendum to decide the fate of slots in Prince George’s County — a process already required to amend the Maryland Constitution to designate Prince George’s County as an area where slots are allowed.
Council Members Mel Franklin, Obie Patterson, Karen Toles, Derrick Leon Davis and Turner argued that the issue was too volatile for the council to decide on its own, and that banning slots would prematurely cut off the county from a potentially lucrative revenue stream.
Penn National Gaming, which recently bought the bankrupt Rosecroft Raceway, commissioned a study that shows casino-style gambling at the racetrack could generate more than $2.3 billion in tax revenue in five years.
Officials have touted slots as a revenue stream for county schools and a proposed $600 million teaching hospital.
Without slots, the racetrack is sure to go under once again, according to Eric Schippers, spokesman for Penn National.
“We’ve made no qualms that the long-term viability, the long-term survival of Rosecroft, is dependent on slots,” Schippers said. “It’s a slow, steady march, unfortunately downward, if we don’t have gaming.”
Council Members Will Campos, Mary Lehman, Andrea Harrison and Olson voted against the resolution and in favor of the slots ban.
Their efforts were backed by a bevy of local religious leaders, who argued that slots are not the right kind of development for a county that has a reputation for high crime, poor schools and foreclosures.
“When you look around the county in places where they do have gambling, you would not find that they’re doing prosperous, or that they’re doing so much better,” Harrison said. “I don’t think we need to stoop to something like this in order for us to grow.”
The nonbinding resolution also calls for slots approval by a majority of Prince George’s County voters. However, there’s nothing in the state constitution to allow one county’s vote to supersede the vote the entire state, according to Karen Zavakos, legislative officer for the council.
