During Maryland’s 90-day legislative session, there were few battles that Gov. Martin O’Malley worked harder to avoid than an attempted gambling expansion.
Just a few weeks later, it has become a fight he says he can’t escape.
Gambling: An issue Gov. Martin O’Malley can’t escape
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However reluctantly, O’Malley (D) now finds himself struggling to broker a deal over whether to allow a full-fledged casino in Prince George’s County and add Las Vegas-style table games at the state’s existing slots locations.
Brinkmanship over the issue contributed to last month’s collapse of the General Assembly session, and O’Malley said he has concluded that letting it fester any longer would get in the way of his priorities and stoke more distrust among legislative leaders.
“I saw it make a mess of the closing days of our legislature, and it threatens to do the same for the remaining two years that I have to serve the people of this state,” O’Malley, who is widely thought to harbor ambitions beyond Maryland, said in an interview last week. “My hope is to resolve this issue and put it behind us.”
His first step toward that goal was assembling an 11-member working group that will convene this week with the hope of crafting a consensus that eluded the legislature during a session in which it also failed to finish work on the state budget.
O’Malley declined to lay out his position but said that if the group can come up with a plan the General Assembly is likely to go along with, he’ll call a special legislative session in early July.
With a host of competing interests, reaching an accord is expected to be difficult — and some suggest that the governor is naive to think anything done this summer will make the gambling debate go away for good.
If there is a special session, “he becomes the central player,” said David Cordish, the developer of the state’s largest planned casino, which is scheduled to open next week in Anne Arundel County. “He will either go down as the champion of expanded gambling or he won’t.”
The work group is likely to start with discussion of a Senate plan that called for a statewide vote on allowing a Prince George’s casino, most likely at National Harbor, and table games, such as black jack and roulette, at the state's five previously authorized slots locations.
That plan is anathema to Cordish, who has argued that it’s patently unfair for the state to allow another casino that would cut significantly into his expected market of the District and Northern Virginia. Maryland leaders should not change the rules of the game before all five slots locations have a chance to succeed, he said.
“It sends a signal that Maryland is not a reliable partner,” Cordish said, adding that a better solution would be to add table games at the five existing locations and delay consideration of a sixth site.
Others have argued that there is a way to be fair to everyone — including bumping up the share of proceeds that existing casinos would be able to keep.
That leaves it to O’Malley to broker a deal, which is not an altogether-unfamiliar place for him.
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