Tell It to the Watermen

Why are horses more deserving of state handouts than crabs and oysters?

THE PERENNIAL public debate over legalizing slot machine gambling in Maryland has entered a merciful moment of quiescence, if only because politicians finally punted the whole question to a statewide referendum this November. As that vote approaches, the argument is certain to resume, kindled particularly by the horse-racing industry, to which slots are a life support measure that would mean tens of millions of dollars in annual subsidies to revive their dying enterprise. Meanwhile, no one is saying much publicly about another dying enterprise with equally deep roots in Maryland lore and tradition: Chesapeake Bay watermen.

The contrast is apt and could not be sharper. The watermen, who have made their living for generations from oysters, crabs and fishing, are as storied a subculture as the state's horse breeders, owners, trainers and track owners. The Chesapeake Bay blue crab is about as synonymous with Maryland as the Preakness or Pimlico and is probably enjoyed by a larger slice of the state's population. In its heyday a quarter-century ago, Maryland's seafood harvest accounted for at least as big a chunk of the state's economy as the horse-racing industry does today, according to Douglas Lipton, a resource economist at the University of Maryland. Yet it is the horse-racing sector that would be treated to a massive state-sponsored bailout if voters approve the ballot question. The watermen, meanwhile, are left to the mercies of the marketplace.

There was a poignant reminder of that last week in a story by The Post's David A. Fahrenthold, who found some former watermen (and waterwomen) now employed as state prison guards. The work they described -- dreary, menacing and, above all, confined -- is about as distant as one could imagine from the former lives they recalled toiling on the bay. But it is a living, a secure and steady one, and it's what they could find to sustain themselves as the bay's fisheries withered, leaving them without the jobs and way of life they knew.

Over the years the state has thrown money at studying the bay's problems and for a time at replenishing the once-abundant oyster population. But neither the dollar amounts nor the political energies that have gone into helping the watermen begin to compare with those that may be lavished on the horse-racing industry, whose deep-pocketed major-domos have filled the campaign treasuries of Maryland lawmakers for years. Maryland officials, including Gov. Martin O'Malley (D), have failed to make a convincing case for why the horse-racing industry should be treated to the state's largess in the form of annual transfers of up to $140 million. They will be hard-pressed to do so, particularly to watermen who may fairly wonder why horses are more deserving wards of the state than oysters and crabs.