The Baltimore Examiner Newspaper, The Examiner

Touché Senate Republicans! They last week told Gov. Martin O’Malley they would not support any slots proposals in a legislative special session. That all but derails one from the agenda this fall and means Marylanders will have more time to dissect the governor’s tax proposals rolled out in recent weeks.

That is good news for everyone.

The governor says a special session is necessary to quickly pass laws to close the estimated $1.7 billion “structural” deficit. But the only thing it would accomplish is squashing debate about brand new proposals that include doubling the cigarette tax, raising income taxes on certain Marylanders and boosting the sales tax 20 percent.

As Senate Republican leader David Brinkley (Frederick-Carroll) said last week, “We feel that the whole purpose of calling a special session is to raise taxes.”

Waiting until January for the regular session will give everyone more time to figure out how the taxes will affect them and the state’s economy.

Slots is one of the key ways the governor plans to pay for government spending in coming years along with the taxes mentioned above. Former Republican Gov. Robert Ehrlich supported slots and many in both parties do as the best way to capture the hundreds of millions of dollars residents spend playing them in Delaware, Pennsylvania and West Virginia. Gov. O’Malley chose common sense in supporting them too.

But it does not mean that Republicans should blindly support them at the expense of letting only partially understood tax proposals through. Besides, O’Malley’s slots proposal is vague at best and we have yet to see him give the same attention to slashing government costs as we have to taking from the people.

Waiting will help legislators to craft a slots proposal that will bring the most revenue to the state. As we suggested last week, auctioning slots licenses to businesses that would return the highest portion of winnings to Maryland would be the best route to take.

We elect our legislators to deliberate over laws. The regular session is the best forum for proper discussion of the people’s business — and especially business designed to drain more money from household budgets.