By Kenneth C.
Rossignol
ST. MARY’S TODAY
CHARLOTTE HALL — Where
Frank Abell’s Steak House once attracted streams of gamblers to
its fabulous buffet and rows of slots machines, the same
building now house’s Billy Hill’s St. Mary’s Landing, with rows
of slot machines and bountiful home cooked meals. According to
those who know, the electronic slot machines are flooding the
area, with more than 600 of them now in action.
While the impotent
Maryland General Assembly spent much of November finding ways to
further dig a hole to hell for themselves and the Democratic
Party by boosting taxes to a record level just as the nation
slides into a recession, the well-bought politicians, flush with
ten years worth of lobbying by race track owners and the biggest
corporate gambling interests in America, finally approved slot
machines.
But.
But, they decided to
let the voters decide at referendum this November if we will
have slots.
But.
But, we already have
them.
According to who you
are talking to, the slot machines are legal or they are
illegal. The slot machines are either gaming devices or
gambling devices. The St. Mary’s Alcoholic Beverage Board took
up the issue on Thursday and it appeared that the Mad Hatter
wrote the script for the board’s discussion of whether or not
licensed beverage holders were allowed to have slot machines,
who regulates, and the St. Mary’s Deputy who is charged with
enforcing liquor laws with the retailers at one point asked if
it was okay if he took gambling devices off of his checklist,
due to the confusion.
Senator Roy Dyson (D.
St. Mary’s, Calvert, Charles) went to Annapolis and to his
credit, voted against the tax hikes last fall in the special
session. Dyson has been a longtime opponent of bringing back
slot machines, but next door to his family business is the Brass
Rail bar, which in spite of whatever the Maryland General Yahoo
Assembly did last fall or is doing now, already has 30 slot
machines.
One does not have to
go to Philadelphia to get a lawyer to dream up the rules, laws,
regulations or playbook for slot machines in Southern Maryland.
What is a slot
machine?
Don’t think that is an
easy question. It is a trick question. There are even trickier
answers.
Former St. Mary’s
States Attorney Walter B. Dorsey refused to approve the current
video version of slot machines for the St. Mary’s Landing
location when it was operated as the House of Ribs.
Now, St. Mary’s
Landing has slot machines in two different parlors in the busy
eatery, with people standing in line to play them on a recent
Saturday afternoon.
Chesapeake Beach Rod n
Reel owner Gerald Donovan got the Calvert County States Attorney
to give him a nod for his blinking and winking payola pals and
Donovan has a few dozen next to his bar overlooking the Bay.
The case law on the
matter stemmed from an effort of then Calvert County States
Attorney Robert Riddle to shut down Donovan’s slot machine
parlor in the Rod n Reel.
Fred’s Liquors has the
video slot machines, as does Boatman’s Mini Mart and ADF Bingo.
Various American
Legion halls in the area have a variety of slot machines, some
of them with handles, which reportedly have a different degree
of legality than others. Some pay cash out at the bottom tray
rather than discharging a slip of paper at the bottom.
There are various
explanations of what constitutes a slot machine.
One member of the
House of Delegates explained it this way: If money drops down in
the tray at the bottom of the machine, it’s a gambling device.
If a paper slip drops down declaring you a winner and you turn
around on your stool and hand it to a cashier who puts cash in
your hand, it’s a gaming device.
Who regulates the new
era of slot machines?
In St. Mary’s County
it is Sheriff Tim Cameron.
Operators go into his
headquarters and come out with a license and get this: they call
them “instant bingo machines”.
Thus far, Cameron says
he has not licensed any of the bars who have the slot machines
except Boatman’s Mini Mart, which are licensed as “Boatman’s
Foundation”.
“We have spent much of
the last three weeks working on this issue, we have been doing
research, talking to state officials and having the prevailing
laws reviewed and it has really tied up our staff,” said
Cameron. “I am going to have a meeting with Lt. Cedar and Fritz
and try to get a clear answer.”
Cameron was asked if
he would simply halt all license applications until the matter
is resolved and he said he would consider doing so and may
require that all applicants first file charitable organization
forms with the Secretary of State, which is responsible for
keeping track of bingo charity records.
“It is going to change
quickly,” said Cameron. “We have had an explosion of these
machines.”
Of the bingo licenses
the Sheriff has issued, all except the one for Boatmans have
gone to fire departments and churches which run bingo
operations.
Bingo, formerly, under
the law, was supposed to be conducted only by charitable
organizations, the fire departments, the St. Mary’s Hospital
Auxiliary, the Little Flower School, Father Andrew White School
and so on. For years, the ADF Bingo parlor has been playing
fast and loose with the law, making sure that whenever anyone
started asking too many questions, that their designated
charities started sounding off about what it would be like for
the county to have to open a new school to replace a parochial
school which would have to close due to losing the bingo money.
With truckloads of new
slot machines…er…Instant Bingo Machines, getting the jargon
right is important, the slot machine purveyors making St. Mary’s
County the little Las Vegas of yesteryear once again, charge
handsomely for their services, with none of that money going to
charity. Towson Vending charges one place 40% while others
charge as much as 70 %, making the cut going to the bar 30%.
Some sources say that a charity will be lucky to as much as 1 %
by the time its all said and done.
Even Maryland Attorney
General Doug Gansler told a recent group at a meeting in St.
Mary’s, that the machines his office allegedly approved were
news to him, that he knows nothing. At last! An honest
politician!
One local slot machine
operator says he has his own charities to give to and those
worthy local organization will receive his checks.
How much is supposed
to go to the charities? It used to be that all of it had to go
to them with the operator of the bingo only allowed to take out
expenses from the proceeds. Sheriff Cameron says that is still
the law.
Little Flower school
allegedly gets some of the slot machine money from the Brass
Rail.
“We need these now
more than ever,” pleaded one local bar owner, who’s explanations
about the process of how he got the slot machines sounds like he
was reading from a prepared statement written by that
Philadelphia lawyer.
“With the economy
going down the tubes, we need all the help we can get,” said the
bar owner.
He isn’t wrong.
Dorsey said that when
the Southern Maryland region had slots before, the machines were
everywhere, at all the small neighborhood stores and bars and
the impact it had on the region was to make the small business
owners slightly prosperous.
“They had a new Buick
in the driveway,” said Dorsey, who was Deputy Attorney General
of Maryland, elected once to the Maryland Senate and five times
as States Attorney, retiring in 1998.
But now, with the
exception of the St. Mary’s County boom of slot machines
currently underway, the plans for thousands of slot machines,
approved last year, to be installed across the state are going
to be mainly at race tracks.
The race track owners
have been plying the pockets of lobbyists and lining the
campaign war chests of the politicians of both parties for the
past ten years in preparation for last fall’s special session
and this fall’s referendum.
It used to be that
when big money interests bought a politician in Maryland, they
stayed bought. But now, this past fall, the well-paid
Republicans turned on their masters and voted no to the slots.
No honor among
thieves.
The Democrats used to
turn down approval of the slots when the Republicans were in
charge of the state, from 2002 to 2006. Now that the Democrats
are in charge, they favored it.
Perhaps it’s simply
the temptation to be cynical about the whole affair, to wonder
why the ones in charge favor the one-armed bandits (the new
electronic slots require that you push a play button) only when
they are in a position to call the shots. At least corruption
in Maryland is bi-partisan.
For the record, the
biggest crook in the history of the State of Maryland was Spiro
Agnew, who, while Baltimore County Executive began getting
payoffs from highway contractors, continued the practice while
Governor and kept on taking envelopes with cash in the Office of
the Vice President. Spiro was our hero! Imagine if he had the
keys to the slot machines in those days. Now you can
understand why Gov. Ehrlich may have been such a big fan of
building the inter-county connector.
Agnew had a lot
competition from the Democrats.
Slots are just the
nose of the camel under the tent for the big gambling operators.
According to an
article this week in USA Today, slots are now approved in 37
states with 3, including Maryland, having the issue on the
ballot this year. In that article, a statistics professor said
that the best way to play slots is not to play them. Anyone who
plays them is a loser, the machines are all luck, no skill and
are never hot or cold. He said the best thing for a winner to
do is to put the winnings in your pocket but most people simply
feed the money back into the machines.
Steve Wynn, one of
America’s biggest casino owners, is a Maryland boy who has done
well for himself, starting out with the Wayson’s family at
Wayson’s Corner, working in their slots and bingo operation
before heading off to make his fame and fortune in Las Vegas.
But Wynn and all the
other big casino outfits are watching Maryland and likely
looking over the new centerpiece of a crown jewel on the
Potomac, the National Harbor, as one of several new gambling
casino sites on the east coast, which, being located right on
the water at the edge of interstate 95, would thrive year round
as traffic takes a break and conventions swarm over the complex.
For now, straight
arrow Tim Cameron, the Sheriff of St. Mary’s, who recently told
our readers in an interview that he views the slots as an
opening act of organized crime, is busy trying to stop issuing
new licenses for the slot machines, as they masquerade as
“instant bingo machines”.
They may look like a
duck, they may walk like a duck but in St. Mary’s County, they
are simply “instant bingo machines”.
Sheriff Cameron aware
that if the slots take over again, that his department will have
plenty of crime to fight in the future.
The Maryland General
Assembly spent more than three weeks debating the issue of slot
machines when all the race track owners had to do was come to
St. Mary’s Sheriff’s headquarters, armed with the court decision
of Riddle vs. Chesapeake Beach, and get a license for an
“instant bingo machine”.
Years ago, the county
fairgrounds had a race track, maybe its time for one to be built
again.
For the record,
playing the slot machines at St. Mary’s Landing resulted in a
total win of five bucks for two people playing a quarter machine
for about an hour.
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