Casino Movement

The Maryland Jockey Club is funding a petition drive to place the legislation authorizing zoning for slots at Arundel Mills on the November ballot, and the county’s election commission says it has enough signatures. If that ruling holds up against litigation by the developer of the proposed Arundel Mills casino, the Cordish Cos., the Jockey Club will also likely bankroll the referendum campaign this fall. What does it hope to get for its efforts? Here’s the best-case scenario:

The campaign for the referendum succeeds, and voters in Anne Arundel County, who overwhelmingly voted to support slots in 2008, knowing that a casino would be built in their jurisdiction, vote to nullify zoning that allows slots at Arundel Mills. In so doing, the voters also knock out zoning that allows for slots at Laurel Park. Then, the Jockey Club hopes that the state slots licensing commission decides to reopen bidding for the Arundel license. This time, Arundel Mills opponents hope, a valid bid can be entered for slots at Laurel, notwithstanding the fact that the track’s owner, Magna Entertainment Corp., is still in bankruptcy and is in the midst of trying to auction off both it and Pimlico.

The licensing commission, under this scenario, would decide to give the license to Laurel in spite of its previous analysis that Arundel Mills is the site that would generate the most revenue for the state. And finally, the county council, which by then would have several new members who have never considered the issue before, would swiftly approve new zoning allowing slots at Laurel, reinstating at least part of the law that voters had just overturned.

Talk about a trifecta. And even if all that happened, it would delay the implementation of slots in Anne Arundel County by a minimum of a year, and probably more.

But if that meant slots would actually go at the track, it would be worth it for the horse industry, right? Maybe not. Under the state’s slots legislation, the horse racing industry gets up to $100 million a year in slots proceeds to supplement purses and to provide incentives for Maryland breeders, whether the slots are at racetracks or not. And the tracks get up to $40 million a year for capital improvements for eight years, regardless of where the slots go. The state’s slots commission estimated that the Arundel Mills site alone would account for $47.5 million a year for the horse racing industry.

Thomas Chuckas, the president of the Maryland Jockey Club, says that wouldn’t be enough to save Maryland’s racing industry. He says slots must be at the tracks because the additional revenue for Laurel would enable a much greater face lift for the facility and help it attract a new generation of horse racing enthusiasts. Having a wider variety of activities at the track — including slots — would be necessary to prevent a rapid death of a storied Maryland tradition, he says.

The problem is, it hasn’t worked out that way in neighboring states. The horse racing industries in Delaware and West Virginia, where slots have been legal for about 15 years, are by some measures in better financial shape than Maryland’s. The subsidized purses there are bigger than the ones in Maryland, and breeding funds provide incentives for horse farms to stay in business or move there.

But the idea that slots at the track would bring more people out to bet on horses? Hasn’t happened. The live handle in West Virginia and Delaware — that is, the amount of money bet by patrons of those tracks on the live races there — is down in both states by nearly 50 percent since 2001. Revenues from out of state generated by simulcasting the races from their tracks have done better, but that has nothing to do with whether the slots parlors are attached to the grandstand or hundreds of miles away. It has to do with the quality of races, which is the result of the purse subsidies the slots support. Maryland’s tracks would get those no matter where our slots parlors are.

Slots at the racetracks in our neighboring states haven’t revitalized the industry; they’ve put it on life support.

Still, the racing industry insists that the referendum is do-or-die. If it fails, and with it the effort to bring slots to Laurel, the people now bidding for that racetrack would suddenly find the idea of continued racing there much less attractive, they say, predicting that the track would be razed in favor of strip malls and sprawl, racing would be limited to a few days a year at Pimlico, and the industry would die.

But that fails to take into account two salient facts. First, the bidding process for the tracks began after Magna’s bid for slots at Laurel had already been thrown out by the slots licensing commission. All those who put in bids did so knowing that slots at Laurel was a long shot at best. And second, one of the bidders for Laurel and Pimlico is David S. Cordish, the man behind the Arundel Mills casino plan. He would have every incentive to continue racing — some of the money that came out of one pocket in the form of taxes on slots proceeds would come back into the other in the form of subsidies to the racing industry.

Anne Arundel County voters will have many things to consider if they get to decide on a slots zoning referendum this fall, but the idea that they’re voting on whether to save the horse racing industry should not be one of them.