Hollywood Casino Perryville

Behind the glitz and bright lights of slot machines at the Hollywood Casino Perryville, Maryland's first slots parlor in decades, the Maryland State Lottery is enforcing the state's gambling laws. As head of the state lottery, Stephen Martino is tasked with overseeing the operations of Hollywood Casino, which opened late last month, and other proposed slots parlors in the state. Martino brings experience as a gaming regulator, having spent five years as head of the Kansas Racing and Gaming Commission.

The future of Laurel Park was further clouded Tuesday, after the racetrack's minority owner said it still supports plans to eliminate live horse racing there. Penn National Gaming, which owns 49 percent of the Maryland Jockey Club, the umbrella group for Laurel Park and Baltimore's Pimlico Race Course , had agreed to a plan to significantly curtail the club's horse-racing operations. Then Frank Stronach, chairman of Jockey Club's parent, MI Developments, reversed course in an interview with The Baltimore Sun this week, saying he would work to save the tracks.

When Mike Lee heard that the Hollywood Casino Perryville was opening Monday morning, a few days ahead of schedule, he scratched his plans for golf and headed for the slot machines. The casino opened its doors to the public at 8 a.m. — beginning a new chapter in Maryland gambling — and Lee was the first of about 35 people in line. "I could have played golf in the rain. This seemed a little more entertaining," said the 59-year-old retiree from Havre de Grace. Within an hour, nearly 200 people had braved a steady rain to get a peek at the new casino, the first of the five planned in Maryland to open.

Howard Community College offered its first casino management course last fall, and now it appears primed to keep pace with a local gambling scene that is moving as fast as a slot machine reel. Launched as part of HCC's hospitality and culinary management degree program, the casino management program will soon unveil a casino lab in the school's science and technology building. Vinnie Rege, HCC hospitality and culinary management program director, said that the school has formed a program partnership with the University of Nevada,Las Vegas, which has an International Gaming Institute.

Construction of an Art-Deco style slots parlor in Cecil County is moving quickly enough that the state's first casino will likely open ahead of schedule, a rare bright spot in what has been a slow-moving process to date. Meanwhile, though, surrounding states have moved to enhance their gaming programs, with Delaware this week and Pennsylvania in early July allowing table games like black jack and roulette. Such games are already permitted in West Virginia. "Delaware has upped the ante," said Peter M. Carlino, the chairman of the board and CEO of Penn National, which owns the Cecil County casino.

The state's spending panel agreed Wednesday to pay nearly $50 million to buy about 1,000 slot machines for the planned Cecil County casino, overcoming the objections of Comptroller Peter Franchot, who called the contract a "windfall" for the gambling industry. Members of the Board of Public Works were given just hours to review the deal, in which the state will spend an average of about $46,542 per video lottery terminal — an amount significantly higher than state and industry analysts say each machine should cost.

With Maryland's first casino opening this week, strong majorities of voters say that they consider the state's embrace of slot-machine gambling a good thing, and that they think the revenue will bolster the state's ailing budget, a Washington Post poll has found. Moreover, more than half of Maryland voters in the survey say they are ready for the state to take the next step: legalizing Las Vegas-style table games — such as blackjack, craps and roulette — at its new casinos.

Casino operator Penn National Gaming Inc. is considering selling its stake in the Maryland Jockey Club and urging its partners to drop a legal challenge to the bidding process that awarded a slot machine license for Anne Arundel County to a competitor. The moves by Penn National might signal the company is shifting its focus to Rosecroft Raceway, the Prince George's County harness-racing track it is buying for $11 million. Penn had set its sights on slots at Laurel Park, which is operated by the Jockey Club, and company officials have indicated that they also plan to push for the legalization of slots at Rosecroft.

Penn National Gaming said Tuesday that it is getting close to reaching an agreement to divest its stake in the Maryland Jockey Club, which operates Laurel Park and Pimlico Race Course , the home of the Preakness Stakes. Eric Schippers, a spokesman for Penn National, said final details are being worked out with Canadian real estate company MI Developments, the Jockey Club's majority owner. The two owners, which at times have appeared at odds on racing issues, have been in talks since early this year to restructure their joint venture to own and operate the tracks.

State slots commissioners are urging lawmakers to loosen the requirements for prospective developers of a casino at Rocky Gap in Western Maryland, which has proved the least attractive of the five sites approved for slot-machine gambling. Two requests for proposals over the past two years have drawn not a single qualified applicant for the site, even after Maryland lawmakers offered a tax break last year to any developer who also purchased the financially troubled, state-supported golf resort at the state park.