After all is said and done, the debate over slot machines and pull-tab machines is far from over. In recent months, the machines have been outlawed, confiscated, destroyed, and after a recent Circuit Court ruling, reinstated.

According to Maryland State Comptroller, Peter Franchot, Maryland’s leading voice against slot machines, “It has been proven, in state after state, that slot machines offer nothing more than false hope to desperate communities.”

The Honorable Franchot states on his website that [slot machines] have destroyed families through addiction, bankruptcies and crime, and have left governments scrambling to cover their enormous and social costs by any means necessary. They have driven small businesses out of existence and left Main Streets across the county a boarded-up shell of what they once were.

Franchot feels the assurance of slot revenue has failed to deliver on the promise to lower taxes and to establish funding for better schools. “Instead [they] have trampled on local planning and zoning efforts which were carefully created to enhance our communities.”

Echoing Franchot’s sentiments is J. Frank Raley – St. Mary’s Representative in the 1950s and ‘60s – who stated in a letter to The Bay Net, “If the Southern Maryland experience in legalized gambling was seriously reviewed as an example, I don’t think any state would go into the gambling business.

“Second, while the Southern Maryland experience in gambling was different in its time and scale, the experience offers insight into issues that come from mixing gambling, government, and the economy, and can be analyzed from the Southern Maryland experience.

“When gambling interests are given legitimacy, greed becomes aggressive and community obligation is only recognized if the gambling industry can dress it up to get what they want. It is predictable as time goes on, gambling will spread once legislation begins in the state.”

Addressing the legislative aspect and the coming constitutional vote in November, Comptroller Franchot stated, “I am disappointed by last month's ruling from the Circuit Court regarding video gaming machines, as it has further complicated the long-standing efforts of local law enforcement to crack down on this illegal gaming. The consequences of this development simply reinforce the need not to enshrine slot machine gaming into our state’s constitution this November as it is a regressive tax which breeds crime, corruption and tax evasion.”

Come November’s election, the landscape of St. Mary’s and other Southern Maryland counties may very well hang in the balance of a ratification of a new state constitutional amendment.