Gambling and horse racing interests are teaming up in an effort to revive the prospects of slot machine gambling at Laurel Park, despite the failure of the track's owner, Magna Entertainment Corp., to make a qualified bid there - and despite The Cordish Cos.' eminently qualified bid for a competing site at Arundel Mills Mall. This is exactly the kind of news that justifies cynicism about Maryland's slots program and the sort of wheeling and dealing that marred the legalization of slots in Pennsylvania, which was entangled for years in corruption scandals and lawsuits.
Penn National, the huge gambling conglomerate that owns Charles Town Races and Slots, is in discussions with possible partners to run a gambling operation at Laurel, in spite of the fact that the company is the sole bidder for the slots license in Cecil County. Maryland's gambling law prohibits a company from having an ownership stake in more than one slots license, but Penn National officials say they're looking for a way around that - perhaps by managing the casino there but having some other entity own the license.
The restriction on owning multiple licenses was put in the law for a reason - to prevent the undue concentration of influence in any one company's hands - and we should be wary of any attempts to evade it.
The impetus for the discussions about reviving the Laurel slots bid is that zoning for the Arundel Mills site is hung up in the Anne Arundel County Council. But it doesn't look like the deadlock there is insurmountable. The council approved amendments Monday night to alleviate some of the concerns about parking at the proposed site, and there's no reason to think the practical objections to that site can't be overcome - or to think that similar problems wouldn't stymie zoning approvals for a Laurel site.
Powerful interests in the state, including Gov. Martin O'Malley and Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller, openly expressed their preference for slots at Laurel well before any bids were submitted. Add the fact that Joseph DeFrancis, the politically connected former owner of the Maryland Jockey Club, would stand to gain millions if slots come to Laurel, and you have a recipe for at least the perception that the process for awarding slots licenses is not completely fair and transparent.
The slots commission and Mr. O'Malley should make clear that any talk of rebidding the Arundel site is extremely premature. Competitive bidding for the slots sites was one of the key safeguards of Maryland's law authorizing slots, and the state needs to do everything possible to dispel the impression that the fix is in.
