PENNSYLVANIA Slots: Jackpot or gamble for state's ailing finances?

Among gambling addicts are governments that get hooked on the revenue, slots opponents argue.
STAFF/WIRE REPORTS
GRANTVILLE, Pa. -- For 20 years, as attendance at the Penn National Race Course has dwindled, Lee Savant has enjoyed squinting through binoculars from the grandstands, watching the horses finish and marking the winners on his racing form.
"To me, it's exciting," said Savant, a 59-year-old retired telephone-cable splicer who spends one night a week at the track near Harrisburg. "I like it when two horses get in the stretch, and they pin their ears back. ... It's the epitome of a true athlete."
But Savant and other enthusiasts haven't been enough to sustain the tracks. Instead, racing supporters in Pennsylvania and neighboring states, including Ohio, are looking to slot machines as the economic salvation for dying tracks such as Penn National, after watching slots reverse declining purses and attendance at tracks in other states, including West Virginia, over the past decade.
It is an idea that has gained momentum in the past year as states look for ways to avert serious budget deficits and pro-slots governors were elected in Maryland and Pennsylvania. Conscious of the looming competition, legislative proponents are eager to make their states' tracks the most attractive to gamblers.
"It's just who's going to get there the fastest with the most," said Rep. Thomas C. Petrone, an Allegheny County Democrat who has sponsored a bill in Pennsylvania to legalize slot machines at the state's four racetracks.
Objections
Still, the opposition to expanding legalized gambling in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Ohio, New York and New Jersey remains an obstacle for those who hope to duplicate the success of slots at tracks in Delaware and West Virginia.
"That is not the way to deal with economic development," said Robert C. Jubelirer, a Blair County Republican who is Pennsylvania's lieutenant governor and Senate president pro tempore.
Jubelirer's stance is similar to those of anti-gambling groups and government watchdogs, who say allowing slots at more tracks will hurt the rest of society, where less money will get spent outside of casinos and the costs of treating gambling addiction and attendant social ills will rise.
One of the addicts is government, they say.
"Once you have state and local governments addicted to that revenue stream, what other things will they do for the gambling industry to appease them?" asked Barry Kauffman, the executive director for Common Cause Pennsylvania.
Fixing shortfalls
Saving horse tracks aside, some politicians see merit in taxing slot-machine revenue to help ease budget shortfalls.
For instance, Pennsylvania's governor-elect, Ed Rendell, wants to raise $500 million to help boost public school funding. Maryland's governor-elect, Robert L. Ehrlich Jr., wants to raise about $800 million dollars annually, also to fund education. Both men say their states' deficits could be as high as $1.8 billion.
"It's just like any other business," said Bennett Liebman of the Program in Racing and Wagering Law at Albany Law School in New York. "If you wish to maintain drive-in movies and you could attach it to slot machines, you'd do it."
Proponents of slots at the tracks like to cite a January 2001 study by Pennsylvania State University that said that adding slots to the four tracks would increase the state's 7,000 horse-racing industry jobs to 24,500.
Optimism that slots are coming to Pennsylvania has resulted in a rush to obtain two remaining harness-racing licenses and one remaining thoroughbred-racing license. The state has already issued three harness licenses and five thoroughbred licenses.