As Pennsylvania lawmakers renew the debate over whether to legalize slot machines, the arguments in favor have a familiar ring to Marylanders - that the state must staunch the flow of money to neighboring states where the devices are permitted.
"We have become the golden goose for neighboring states," said Thomas M. Kauffman, executive director of the Pennsylvania Horse Racing Association. He says the state is losing tens of millions of dollars every month to slots in adjacent states.
In Maryland, slots supporters say the same thing about competition with the state's neighbors, including, potentially, Pennsylvania.
Pitting one state against another has proved a successful strategy as the gambling industry has expanded across the country. Because casinos pay taxes that fund important programs, lawmakers view gambling across state lines as a drain on the treasury.
"There's no way we can survive economically with all of our monies going to Delaware and West Virginia - and possibly Pennsylvania in the immediate future," said Del. Clarence Davis, an East Baltimore Democrat who supports expanding gambling. "It's Maryland money paying for education and all sorts of human services programs in those states."
But critics say the competition quickly turns into a "race to the bottom," as states try to up the ante on one another. Officials in West Virginia, for example, have said they may add blackjack and other table games to their slots offerings if Maryland or Pennsylvania legalizes the devices. And tiny Delaware, which has three racetrack casinos, is considering opening two new slots casinos.
As the competition heats up, experts who study the gambling industry say, restrictions are lifted, more sites for gambling open, and new and flashier types of games are introduced - whatever it takes to keep players coming in and the money flowing.
"We saw it especially with the riverboat casinos in the Midwest," said William R. Eadington, director of the Institute for the Study of Gambling and Commercial Gaming at the University of Nevada, Reno. "As one state relaxes its rules, others feel compelled to follow."
What started in 1991 as small riverboat casinos cruising the waterways of Iowa, with $5 betting limits and other tight restrictions, has grown into something much larger. Now, giant dockside casinos are found across a wide swath of the Midwest - Illinois, Missouri and Indiana -with none of the restrictions initially imposed in Iowa.
