Officials say not to bet on slots for schools

There are some things that the state will not be able to do without the $700 million estimated to come from slots, such as fully fund teacher and county employee pensions, King said.

‘‘If the slots thing doesn’t pass, it’s a huge chunk of money,” she said. ‘‘[Pensions will] be one of the first things they’ll start talking about.”

Shifting pension costs would ‘‘bankrupt some counties,” said King, one of the few lawmakers from Montgomery County who has come out in support of the referendum as a way of keeping slots revenue from flowing across the border to Delaware, Pennsylvania and West Virginia.

King said she would not support slots if the Pandora’s box of gambling had not already been opened by Maryland’s neighbors, where casinos and slots parlors at racetracks have sprung up in recent years, drawing gamblers from Maryland.

Facing the prospect of teachers’ pensions being shifted to the counties, where hard-fought increases in retirement benefits could be lost, MSTA decided to support the referendum to bring 15,000 slot machines to five locations across the state.

‘‘We think it’s a very real danger,” MSTA spokesman Daniel Kaufman said of the chance of pension cost shifts if the state cannot generate new revenue through slots.

Other selling points were the details of the constitutional amendment legalizing slots that voters will weigh in on in November.

The slots bill passed during last fall’s special legislative session calls for 48.5 percent to 51.5 percent of all slots revenue to go to an education trust fund as an add-on to the existing Thornton formula for funding K-12 schools.

The need to fund education increases is real, said Barbara A. Hoffman, a lobbyist who headed the Senate Budget and Taxation Committee that helped craft the $1.3 billion Thornton plan in 2002. ‘‘But counties need to understand and the public needs to understand that there’s not enough money.”

Some are not so sure that slots revenue will go toward schools.

Slots revenue is likely to be used for new spending, rather than for plugging holes in the budget, said Herbert H. McMillan, a former Republican delegate who is president of the Maryland Taxpayers Association.

‘‘I don’t see why any fiscal conservative would trust [Gov. Martin] O’Malley to use the money well,” he said.

The group has yet to take a position on the referendum. Speaking on his own behalf, McMillan, who voted for slots plans during the Ehrlich administration, said he sees slots and budget cuts as a lesser evil than tax increases.

But he is skeptical of painting slots as the savior for education that some are making it out to be.

‘‘The notion that you’ll have to have slots to educate our children, I just don’t believe it,” McMillan said. ‘‘It’s bogus.”