FBI Investigation Donation By Racetrack Owner
ANNAPOLIS, Md. -- Horse-racing tracks are facing the possibility of being squeezed out of any deal to expand gambling in Maryland, lawmakers and lobbyists say.
Legislators say the campaign to legalize slots at racetracks has been dealt a blow by a series of unrelated legal and public relations mistakes.
Topping the list: news that the FBI is scrutinizing a $200,000 donation that racetrack owner Joseph A. DeFrancis gave to a national political committee overseen by Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr., D-Prince George's.
Another political setback came last week when lawmakers learned that racetrack owner William Rickman Sr. held a fund-raiser at his home for Delegate John A. Hurson, D-Montgomery, just 10 days after the influential delegate wrote a letter to legislative leaders, pitching a plan to legalize slots.
Although Hurson said the letter was not intended to help Rickman, critics cited it as evidence that racetrack owners have amassed outsized influence in Annapolis.
Also hurting the owners' cause has been a bitter court battle that erupted last month between two out-of-state gambling firms for control of Rosecroft Raceway, a harness-racing track in Prince George's County that is considered a potentially lucrative location for slots.
"It seems to me that slots at racetracks is going to have a hard time being revived from the dead," said Thomas Schaller, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Maryland Baltimore County.
Track owners had high hopes in November after Gov. Robert Ehrlich was elected and declared that his top priority would be to persuade the General Assembly to legalize slot machines at four of the state's racetracks.
Racing industry officials said that without slots, they were in danger of going out of business. They argued that they were losing ground to tracks in West Virginia and Delaware, where the machines are legal.
The Senate passed a slots bill in March that would have divided the profits primarily between the tracks and public schools, but a House of Delegates committee rejected the proposal, with many lawmakers citing concerns that the deal was overly sweet for the industry.
The House has promised to take a fresh look at the issue this summer, and a committee will begin holding hearings on slots next week.
"I trust that once this investigation is over, nothing will be found," said Sen. Thomas M. Middleton, D-Charles, who opposes gambling, though he is a Miller ally on most issues.
"But I think it's going to make it tougher for slots at racetracks only, I certainly do."
Slots proponents agreed that the FBI inquiry makes it more difficult for racetracks - especially those owned by DeFrancis - to obtain an exclusive right to operate slot machines.
"It's obviously going to have a detrimental effect on Laurel and Pimlico," said Gerard E. Evans, lobbyist for the Maryland Thoroughbred Horsemen's Association. "Let's face it: Pimlico was in trouble even before this happened. Now, this puts a further cloud over it."
Laurel and Pimlico were allotted a combined 7,000 slot machines under the bill approved in March by the Senate. Since then, however, House Speaker Michael E. Busch, D-Anne Arundel, has said it would make more sense for the state to build and run slot operations on its own, possibly cutting out racetrack owners altogether.
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