Owners of Laurel Park racetrack are trying to revive their disqualified bid for slot machines with a last-ditch constitutional claim, but attorneys for the state argued in court yesterday that "market conditions" rather than a legal flaw led to the defective application.
Long considered a front-runner for a lucrative gambling license, Laurel Park was disqualified this month after its parent, financially ailing Magna Entertainment Corp., failed to submit $28.5 million in required slots-application fees.
Attorneys for the track are suing the state, claiming that the failure to pay was appropriate because the fees are technically not refundable and that the entire bidding process constitutes an illegal "forfeiture of property" prohibited by the Maryland Constitution.
"There is no refundability under the clear and unambiguous language" of the gambling law ratified by voters in November, said Alan Rifkin, an attorney for the track and partner in an influential Annapolis law and lobbying firm that positioned Laurel Park for slots, only to see it come up short at the 11th hour.
In more than an hour of impassioned monologue yesterday in Anne Arundel Circuit Court, Rifkin narrated a wide-ranging argument that suggested Maryland bureaucrats might be committing a "felony" if they were to refund fees, and he implored Judge William C. Mulford II to prevent "enormous harm" to Maryland horse racing by preserving Laurel's chances for slots.
Austin Schlick, chief of litigation in the attorney general's office, offered a less emotional rebuttal. He noted that the track lobbied for the precise legislation it now claims is constitutionally "defective"; that it failed to raise the refundability theory before the Feb. 2 deadline; and that it never mentioned such concerns in its actual application.
Laurel is asking the court to overturn the state's disqualification of its bid. Schlick said such an action would "blow up the entire procurement" and delay slots revenues Maryland is counting on for future education funding.
Schlick also counseled Mulford to mind the "canon of avoiding absurd results," in which Rifkin's literal reading of the law could imply "that a whole range of ordinary government actions are illegal," including bank accounts used by the court.
This month, state officials threw out two of six proposals for slot-machine casinos - at Laurel and Rocky Gap State Park in Western Maryland. Both were ruled ineligible for failure to pay required license fees.
