"We have to tweak what our colleagues did so we can get reports in time," said Dyson, who opposed the slots legislation last fall.
Besides targeting corporate spending, lawmakers voted last fall to require any committee formed to influence votes on the slots referendum to file an extra spending report Oct. 10, four weeks before the Nov. 4 election.
Other reports are due two weeks before and two weeks after the vote, said Jared DeMarinis, candidacy and campaign finance director for the Board of Elections.
Corporations are required to file the same reports that campaign committees must file under the slots referendum law adopted last fall. But the law spells out only that they must disclose spending above $10,000 on advertising, fliers and other campaign material.
Madaleno said the disclosure requirement was written to encompass the possibility that big-money interests might get into the slots campaign on either side.
"There could be gambling interests in Atlantic City who are anxious not to have slot machines in Maryland," Madaleno said. "So we want to know who's paying for the campaigns."
Opponents of slot machine gambling say they have no problem with tightening the spending reporting, though at least one scoffs at what he calls an "urban legend" that out-of-state gambling interests could get involved in Maryland's referendum campaign.
Aaron Meisner, coordinating chairman of StopSlots Maryland, said, "Everybody's always explaining to me how that's going to happen, and yet in all the years we've been fighting this fight, I've never had a single conversation with anyone from the gambling industry inside or outside the state about supporting our side."
"I don't think anyone's going to give us $10,000," said W. Minor Carter, lobbyist for StopSlots.
While the anti-slots forces are counting on raising funds from individuals opposed to more gambling in the state, Carter acknowledged that StopSlots might spend millions of dollars to get its message to voters.
"One of our guys thinks it's a $3 million job, and another said $7 million," Carter said.
Gambling ballot measures in other states have resulted in hefty contributions to groups campaigning for and against them. More than $28 million poured into a 2006 Ohio campaign, according to a study, and nearly $23 million into a ballot fight in Rhode Island.
tim.wheeler@baltsun.com
