GOP senators fight 'nonfactor' label by standing firm against slots 

Baltimore Examiner 

Len Lazerick

October 8, 2007

Excluded from private discussions between Gov. Martin O’Malley and Democratic lawmakers about how to erase a $1.7 billion deficit, Republican senators employed the one point of political leverage they had left: slots.

Republicans have been key to the passage of every slot machine proposal in the past four years, but they declared they would not back such a plan during a special session.

Democrats could muster the votes to enact most of O’Malley’s tax proposals — raising sales, income, corporate, titling and cigarette taxes. Several of those have passed the House of Delegates in recent years. But O’Malley has made slot revenues a key element of his long-term budget plans to increase spending on schools and health care in three to four years.

Senate President Thomas Mike Miller said the Republicans’ new stance “makes them such a nonfactor in any of the decision-making process,” and he could get the needed 24 votes for slots with the GOP, something he has been unable to do so far.

The four slots proposals Miller muscled through the Senate in the last five years got only 15 to 19 Democratic votes, five to nine votes shy of a majority. Republicans such as Senate Republican Leader David Brinkley and Whip Allan Kittleman, along with six other Republicans, made the winning difference every time.

Publicly, O’Malley calls for “finding consensus” and avoiding the do-nothing bickering of the Ehrlich years. But the squeals of alarm from the State House could be heard a block away at Democratic Party headquarters. Two hours after the GOP announcement, the party’s new executive director, Quincy Gamble, issued a screed attacking Brinkley for a “shameful lack of character,” accusing him of “flip-flop,” “whining,” and “pure partisan politics.”

Brinkley made clear that he was willing to support slots again, but only during the regular session, when all the fiscal cards were on the table, including the state budget, in which he wants to see more cuts.

The Democratic Party accused Brinkley of adding $500 million to the deficit with the potential two- to three-month delay. But that holds true only if the legislature does not raise the state sales and income taxes by Jan. 1. The slots proposal would bring in a piddling $27 million in fiscal 2009.

In other words, the Democratic Party charged that Republicans’ short-term opposition to slots — not the long-standing principled opposition of many Democrats or the governor’s nine-month delay in crafting a plan — somehow undermines the entire O’Malley solution to the deficit.

Not bad for a day’s work by “nonfactors” in the decision-making process.

And Brinkley notes that it’s O’Malley who’s changed positions on slots. As mayor, the governor called them “predatory” on the working poor. In the campaign, he favored “a limited number” at racetracks to aid the horse industry. Now he is backing at least 9,500, with only one-sixth of the money going to racing.