Protecting Baltimore's illegal slots

The Baltimore Sun

In the back of the Morrell Park bar owned by City Council member Edward L. Reisinger and his family are four video gambling machines. The machines, not surprisingly, have names commonly associated with slot machines. There are two "cherry masters," one "fruit bonus" and one "draw poker" machine.

Last week, the City Council reached a breathtaking ethical low point when its Land Use and Transportation Committee - chaired by Reisinger - voted to send a bill to the full council that would increase the number of these illegal gambling machines allowed in the Reisingers' Good Times Tavern and hundreds of other Baltimore businesses.

On Thursday night, the full council gave its tentative approval to the bill in a 9-4 vote, with one member absent and Reisinger abstaining.

The bill came out of committee almost a year after this writer completed a study for the Abell Foundation revealing a lucrative industry of nearly 3,500 illegal slot machines in Baltimore City and Baltimore County that are licensed by the local governments under the pretense that the machines are "for amusement only."

The report also showed that the industry goes largely untaxed, with machine owners underreporting revenues to the Maryland comptroller by an estimated $63 million to $153 million a year. Owners of some of the largest numbers of the gambling machines are defunct corporations, convicted felons and tax evaders.

The city and county have sanctioned the machines, even though their own vice detectives - and FBI gambling experts - have repeatedly proven gamblers are awarded their winnings by bartenders and clerks, instead of from slots in the machines. Not even a Maryland Court of Appeals decision in 1985 - deeming the machines illegal by design - has stopped the city and county from sanctioning them.

The bill that Reisinger's committee passed last week was a result of this writer's discovery that hundreds of bars and other businesses were violating the city zoning code by having too many machines. For example, a "food market" in Hampden had 17 machines, but the zoning law allowed only two. Many bars, allowed a limit of five machines, had eight or more.

Once the zoning violations were revealed, city council President Sheila Dixon and eight other council members introduced the bill that would increase - in some places double - the number of amusement devices allowed.

The legislation was proposed at the request of the Baltimore Licensed Beverage Association, whose president at the time was John Vontran, a leading owner of video gambling machines, with 93 of them placed in businesses and registered last year in the city and county. He is also a generous campaign donor, having given $27,862 to state and local officials in the last seven years, including $375 to Reisinger's campaign.

Reisinger, in a recent interview with this writer for an update on the Abell study, said he and his wife, Maria, know Vontran and are members of the Baltimore Licensed Beverage Association.

Reisinger also said he was instructed by the city law department that his conflict of interest prevented him from voting on the bill, but he saw nothing wrong with overseeing the legislation.

"I was objective," he said.

But the record shows he could have dug deeper as the bill's manager - or at least followed up on suggestions and comments made at a council hearing and work session.

The council bill file shows that no representative of the police department testified to council members on the bill, despite a note from a hearing summary that states, "The Police Department will be invited to the next work session and requested to bring statistics on amusement devices' complaints."

Reisinger said he did not know why the police department ultimately was never invited to speak about the bill.

If city vice detectives had been invited to testify, council members might have heard them describe what detectives have said in official police reports they have seen in hundreds of bars over the years, where bartenders pay cash to gambling winners. The reports show that when the detectives raided the bars they confiscated hundreds of dollars from inside the machines, and thousands more stashed in drawers and safes - even in the most rundown taverns.

Reisinger said that his wife and stepson run the bar in which he is a partner and he does not know if they pay gamblers their winnings.

"As far as I'm concerned they're not supposed to pay off," he said.

When told that the Maryland Court of Appeals ruled that the machines are illegal, he said, "If it's illegal then they [the city] shouldn't be issuing licenses."

The Sun noted last week that Reisinger's bar is in violation of the city zoning law because it has licenses for a total of six amusement devices (the four gambling machines plus two others), one more than the law allows. But if the bill his committee passed takes effect, his problem will be solved.

The committee, in forwarding the legislation to the full council, apparently also ignored advice from the city law department.

Assistant solicitor Elena R. DiPietro noted that although her department has no legal grounds to disapprove the zoning bill, a new law increasing the number of machines in Baltimore "could serve to promote illegal gambling."

In a letter to the council, she wrote, "There are serious public policy concerns surrounding this legislation." She also cited a ruling by the state's highest court, called State vs. One Hundred and Fifty-Eight Gambling Devices, that found, "Machines designed for illegal gambling can be forfeited as illegal gambling devices."

This court case is cited by the Harford County and Carroll County state's attorneys as the reason they do not allow video gambling devices in their counties and confiscate them without waiting to see a gambling payout.

"They're illegal as far as I'm concerned," said Harford County State's Attorney Joseph I. Cassilly in the Abell report. "I think they should really be gotten rid of."

But in Baltimore city and county, the local amusement device licensing offices seem to go out of their way to keep the gambling machines in business.

The Abell report showed that when vice detectives watch payouts to gamblers, arrest bar owners and confiscate gambling machines, the local governments cancel out the police work by obliging the vending companies and issuing new permits for replacement machines within a few days.

Last week, none of the council's land use committee members raised any questions about this illegal industry, except for Mary Pat Clarke.

In The Sun last week, she was quoted as saying, "I honestly didn't think that such a bill would make it out of committee, but it came flying out with an overwhelming majority."

The truth is that many Baltimore bar owners say they don't sell enough beer to stay in business. Without the gambling machines, they have said, they would go under. That would not only be bad for business, but bad for politics.

One can't help recall a now-infamous quote used by political writers about the late Baltimore State Sen. Joseph Staszak, a tavern owner. When he voted "yes" on a bill favorable to the bar owners, he was asked if he had a conflict of interest.

"How does this conflict with my interest?" he is supposed to have said.

Joan Jacobson, a former reporter for The Sun, produced a report published last January on the use of gambling machines in taverns and other public businesses based on research funded by the Abell Foundation.

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