Slots Bill Squeaks Through House

Md. Speaker Unwilling To Negotiate Changes

Del. Clarence Davis and Minority Whip Anthony J. O'Donnell hug after winning enough votes for the measure in the House. At right is Ways and Means Committee Chairman Sheila E. Hixson, who helped craft the bill. (Marvin Joseph -- The Washington Post)

The Maryland House of Delegates mustered the bare minimum of votes needed yesterday to invite slot machine gambling into the state, advancing a scaled-back version of Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr.'s signature initiative that could still prove a tough sell in the Senate

The governor called passage in the House a "big deal" for the star-crossed legislation that has never before cleared the chamber. But within an hour of the 71 to 66 vote, signs were emerging that the measure could fall prey to the same poisonous political dynamic that has repeatedly stymied efforts to expand gambling in the state.

House Speaker Michael E. Busch (D-Anne Arundel), a slots opponent, said he would not negotiate with the Senate or the governor on any further changes to the bill. Even a slight alteration, he said, would break the fragile majority that enabled it to pass with the precise number of votes needed in the 141-member House.

"The governor and the president of the Senate are either going to have to accept this bill, or there will be no expansion of gambling in Maryland," Busch said.

Slots advocates said yesterday that the speaker's unbending stance could mean the hard-fought victory will do little to help an initiative that has long been wedged among the competing interests of the state's three most powerful officeholders: Ehrlich, Busch and Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr. (D-Calvert).

Though Busch wants a modest slots proposal that directs a greater percentage of the state's take to school construction, Ehrlich and Miller continued to endorse a vastly different initiative -- one with nearly double the machines and venues, raising more money for education, horse racing and gambling interests.

The day in many respects encapsulated what has been a roller-coaster ride for advocates on both sides of the debate in the past decade, when gambling interests began working to engineer a return of machines that had been outlawed in Maryland for all but charitable purposes in 1968.

That push surged when Ehrlich (R) was elected in 2002 on the promise to turn slot machines into a ready source of cash for the state's ambitious, costly education initiatives.

Even as Republicans lined up behind the House measure yesterday, they did so expecting it would be only a first step toward delivering the governor's preferred initiative. Miller, too, responded to the vote, saying he would stand with Ehrlich in calling for negotiations to bridge the wide gap between the House and Senate bills.

Miller called Busch's decision to hold firmly to the House bill a break with years of precedent, saying that in his four decades in Annapolis, "No one has said, 'My way or the highway,' and that's not going to start right now."

Busch described the slots proposal as being "in its best posture," but Miller said the approach is clearly inferior to the Senate bill's. While the House bill would permit 9,500 machines at four locations -- in Allegany, Anne Arundel, Frederick and Harford counties -- the Senate would allow 15,500 machines at seven sites.

The venues specified in the House bill "don't serve the state economically," Miller said, noting that the roughly $350 million that would be raised for education by the House bill is about half the amount that would be raised by taking the Senate approach.

"They took a good bill that's been crafted over three years by the governor and Senate, and they reshaped it," Miller said. "I've been down this road so many times before with the House. . . . The pessimists are going to say the speaker has found a new way to kill the bill."

The governor was more optimistic. Interrupting a snowball fight with his 5-year-old son Drew, Ehrlich called it "a monumental day."