No matter which way you lean on slots, rest assured the outcome for Maryland will not be absurd. There's case law against that.
"[R]esults that are unreasonable, illogical or inconsistent with common sense should be avoided." So says the legal citation from what must have been a doozy of a case, Kaczorowski v. City of Baltimore.
Maryland Assistant Attorney General Bonnie Kirkland cited that bit nearly a year ago when responding to state Sen. Ed Kasemeyer, who'd asked her to interpret part of the slots legislation.
Kasemeyer had inquired about the part stating that if slots passes, "The General Assembly may only authorize additional forms or expansion of commercial gaming if approval is granted through a referendum authorized by an act of the General Assembly in a general election by a majority of the qualified voters in the state."
It's the "majority of the qualified voters in the state" bit that Kasemeyer questioned. At least until now, ballot questions have passed when the yes votes simply outnumbered the nos. In this case, before casinos or even more slot machines could come, would a majority of Maryland's 3.4 million registered voters have to vote yes?
That would be kind of a high bar, which you'd think would concern gambling interests and comfort slots foes, though each side says the opposite, at least publicly.
Said Wayne Wright, executive secretary of the pro-slots Maryland Thoroughbred Horsemen's Association: "I don't think at this point anybody's looking that far down the road."
Scott Arceneaux, a senior adviser to Marylanders United to Stop Slots, on the other hand, offered what he called "the Republican business argument": "If the legislation means what it says, it clearly places almost an unreachable hurdle" for adjusting the number of machines or slots locations. "There's absolutely no business flexibility to try to make the thing work."
In any case, Kirkland contends the legislation doesn't mean what it says, and that a simple majority of the votes cast would do the trick.
"If 'a majority of the qualified voters in [the] State' is read literally, the result would be to require more votes than likely would be cast in the entire election," she wrote. "Such a result would be absurd."
Connect the dots
Lots of pageantry - a special Mass, the Handel Choir, the Knights of Columbus in capes and plumed hats - as semiretired Baltimore County Circuit Judge Frank Cicone was honored the other night. The St. Thomas More Society of Maryland gave him its annual Man For All Seasons Award. "He's renowned for his ability to bring parties together and resolve cases," said Baltimore County Executive Jim Smith, a former recipient of the award who was on the bench with Cicone. ... The same day that Mayor Sheila Dixon and three city employees set off on a six-day, $17,000 jaunt to a pair of Sister Cities in Egypt, Baltimore forked over $2,900 to rent a tent and banquet equipment for the Baltimore-Piraeus Sister City Committee. Does this cash-strapped city ever see a return on this stuff? The answer came last week in the form of a free concert series performed by the De Coolsingers, a men's choir from Rotterdam, Baltimore's Sister City in the Netherlands.
