Be careful about the promises you make, because your political foes won't let you forget them. Maryland Gov. Robert Ehrlich, whose bill to bring slot-machine gambling to the state's horse tracks is faltering, seems trapped again by his own words.
Earlier in the debate, legislators said Ehrlich had promised to fund the educational recommendations of the Thornton Commission, whether or not slots won approval. That was in stark contrast to his "no slots, no Thornton" statement made at a state senate hearing late last month.
Now lawmakers have turned up an August article written by Ehrlich in which he pledged to veto any bill that didn't give areas where slots would be located the right to refuse them. Ehrlich's current bill doesn't say that, no doubt because it would jeopardize a horse track planned for Allegany County, where there's some strong opposition to it.
As we said last week, Ehrlich's slots strategy, which is apparently being made up as the session goes along, does not give us much confidence that the system will work as he envisions it, or, for that matter, that anyone in his administration has any idea how it will work. Finding out how slots function in Delaware or West Virginia, then borrowing the best of those systems makes a lot more sense than reinventing the wheel.
