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Hey, here's an interesting editorial in today's Washington Post. Maryland legislators want to follow Pennsylvania's lead....

Pennsylvania's Slots Sleaze

IT TOOK LESS than six months from the date Pennsylvania legalized the expansion of slot machine gambling last year for state prosecutors to bring their first slots-related indictment. The mayor of Erie was accused of trying to enrich himself through a land deal at a proposed gambling site. He was charged with criminal conspiracy, conflict of interest and other corruption-related counts. Naturally, Maryland's slots advocates will gloss over that and other signs of sleaze oozing to the surface in Pennsylvania; they'll focus instead on the $1 billion in annual revenue that the Keystone State hopes to harvest from casinos and slots parlors a few years from now. But as lawmakers in Annapolis prepare to negotiate a political compromise on slots, they would be wise to examine Pennsylvania's experience, and the corruption that may slither southward.

As in Maryland, slots partisans in Pennsylvania, led by a popular first-term governor, moaned about losing potential income to neighboring states' casinos. Last July they passed slots legislation envisioning a vast empire of 61,000 machines at seven racetracks, two resort hotels and five other locations. Gov. Edward G. Rendell promised that revenue from slots, which would trim perhaps $300 from the property tax bill of an average homeowner, would improve Pennsylvania's "quality of life."

Instead, in the brief period since the slots bill passed, Pennsylvanians have been treated to a series of disquieting disclosures. Some involved the state's Gaming Control Board, a powerful body established to issue hugely profitable casino licenses and oversee the state's plunge into gambling. Mr. Rendell's first pick as board chairman was forced to resign before he started after the Philadelphia Daily News revealed he had helped an alleged underworld crime figure regain a boxing license at a casino in Connecticut. A short time later it was reported that another man with big-time ties to organized crime documented by the government -- and a felony fraud conviction in his past -- had bought a defunct 1,000-acre resort in hopes of developing it into a casino. Then there was the matter of Erie's mayor, Rick Filippi, who is in hot water for trying to acquire land near a proposed casino site where MTR Gaming Group Inc. wants to build an $80 million horse-racing track and entertainment complex. "It has nothing to do with us," Ted Arneault, MTR's chief executive, told the Associated Press. "If you really think about it, his problems would have existed if IBM was going to build a plant there."

Well, not exactly. In state after state, slots have fostered an atmosphere of corruption and a seedy mingling of monied interests, huge potential profits and susceptible politicians. The competition to secure a license and to locate a casino strategically can amount to a scramble for a permit to print money. "Casino licenses are extremely valuable, and there are often a limited number of them, so bidding is going to be very fierce and very competitive," said Bill Thompson of the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, who has studied states' experiences with gambling. "It's extremely hard to keep the corruption out."

In Maryland's House of Delegates, some anti-slots lawmakers from Baltimore and from Prince George's County voted for the slots bill last week because it would keep casinos out of their jurisdictions -- while cutting them in on the profits. But once gambling money and interests are allowed in, their insidious influence may not be so easily quarantined. Before consenting to a final slots bill, Maryland lawmakers should ponder Pennsylvania's experience and carefully weigh the stakes.

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