February 19, 2002
 
 
 
 
 CUMBERLAND - With little fanfare, West Virginia is creating dozens of new, legal gambling venues within a few miles of small towns across Western Maryland.
 
 A state law that took effect Jan. 1 allows as many as 9,000 video gambling devices to be installed in bars and social clubs throughout West Virginia.
 
 The law sparks a significant change in Maryland's gambling landscape that some predict will add fuel to the political debate in Maryland over the fractious issue of legalizing slots.
 
 Although the video gambling devices have just started trickling into bars along the Maryland border in recent weeks, their impact is being felt by some businesses near the state line.
 
 One place hit: Geatz's, a family-owned steak and seafood restaurant and lounge in Cumberland managed by J.P. and Brenda Geatz. A two-minute drive away, just across the Potomac River in Ridgeley, W.Va., is My Place Club - where people can go to gamble on video devices that the Geatzes are forbidden to have in their business.
 
 "A lot of our regular bar crowd like to gamble, and they tell us they are going over there [Ridgeley] to play," laments Brenda Geatz.
 
 Like many other bar owners in Allegany County, the Geatzes say they once had unregulated, or "gray," video poker games but removed them after authorities cracked down in 1999.
 
 Maryland House Speaker Casper R. Taylor Jr. said he sympathizes with small-business owners such as the Geatzes. The double-whammy of a crackdown on "gray" machines with similar gambling devices becoming legal just across the state line is devastating the bar and lounge business in Western Maryland, the Allegany County Democrat said.
 
 "We have got to come to grips with the competitive dilemma we find ourselves in Maryland from the standpoint of generating revenues for the state and of evening the playing field for our private sector economy," Taylor said.
 
 Still, he stopped short of an outright endorsement of legalized video gambling devices for bars in Maryland. Although he supports slots at Maryland's horse tracks to help them compete with tracks in West Virginia and Delaware, Taylor said legalizing them in retail establishments raises more troublesome issues. "I have not reached a conclusion about what to do with retail establishments and gambling," he said.
 
 West Virginia legalized the gambling devices for bars and social service clubs through that state's lottery. Bars are allowed up to five devices; social service clubs can have 10. They are tied into a central computer at the lottery that keeps track of the amount of money the machines generate.
 
 The devices - some identical to the electronic slots at four West Virginia racetracks and manufactured by major slot machine makers - offer a variety of games, including video poker and slot-style games.
 
 Players pumping $20 bills at a time into the machines can bet up to $2 a play, building credits they can play off or cash in as winnings. The maximum payoff varies depending on the brand of the machine and its manufacturer.
 
 Although Maryland offers Keno games through its state lottery, the video machines in West Virginia are more akin to slots and offer rapid-fire, interactive play.
 
 The video gambling devices can be a lucrative source of revenue. As of early this month, the 1,400 video gambling devices on line with the West Virginia lottery were generating an average of $120 each a day, after payoffs to winning players, lottery officials said.
 
 At that rate, a bar with five machines would produce annual revenues after payoffs of about $200,000. The take is generally split three ways - among the state, the establishment owner and an operator, who buys, installs and services machines at locations.
 
 The state's share can run as high as 50 percent, depending on how much money the devices generate on average statewide during each three-month period, lottery officials said.
 
 While they are a lucrative source of revenue, critics say, they carry a heavy price tag for some, especially low-income families. "It's not a painless tax," said Alice Click of Point Pleasant, W.Va. "It affects the poor especially, and we have more than our share of poor people in West Virginia. "
 
 Click heads the state's chapter of Concerned Women for America, a conservative group that advocates pro-family causes. She said horror stories are cropping up of gamblers losing their paychecks.
 
 State-mandated signs above the machines at places such as Ollie's Sports Bar & Grill, just south of the Maryland line off Interstate 81, warn of the dangers: "Caution: Gambling and playing this machine can be hazardous to your health, your finances and your future."
 
 But on a recent Thursday night, the warning seemed to draw little notice from players at Ollie's, their faces locked on to the colorful glow of the video screens as they fed $20 bills into a bank of four machines. "You've got to figure you can't win, but it is great entertainment," said one of Ollie's regular players, Richard Huene, who lives near the bar.
 
 The machines can chew through bills quickly.
 
 Three stools down from Huene, a rangy, bearded man in work jeans and a shirt with his first name sewn on the pocket steps unsteadily up to the bar, sets down his beer and peels off two $50 bills from a crumpled wad to change them into the $20s the machine he is playing will take. A short time later, the money gone, he reaches back into his pocket for the smaller bills he has left.
 
 Some economic experts say that such "convenience" gambling at neighborhood bars is the worst possible form of gambling for a community. "If I had to outlaw any type of gambling, it would be video poker machines [at bars]," said David B. Johnson, a professor emeritus of economics at Louisiana State University. "It attracts people at the lowest income level. The more convenient you make gambling by having an outlet on almost every corner, the more troublesome it is."
 
 In Maryland, most observers say there is little chance that any kind of gambling devices will be legalized until after Gov. Parris N. Glendening, a resolute gambling opponent, leaves office next year. But high-powered lobbyists and such influential legislators as Taylor are laying the groundwork to try to get slots approved at Maryland's racetracks.
 
 If that happens, some say, bars will push for them as well - as happened in
 West Virginia after slots were approved for four tracks beginning in the
 mid-1990s.
 
 "It's the same pattern that has developed in every other state that has legalized slots - first they say they want to save the racetracks, then the bar owners have to have them," said Kimberly S. Roman of Glen Burnie, a co-chairwoman of the anti-gambling group NocasiNO Maryland. "They'll say: 'This is a monopoly. How can you say we can't have it?'"
 
 That argument was posed in West Virginia's Legislature, along with the idea that it was better to legalize, tax and regulate gambling devices in bars than to allow illegal machines to proliferate around the state. The arguments were made by people such as Lee Wesson, one of West Virginia's largest video poker operators. His company, based in Keyser, is supplying 400 machines to bars around the state and hopes to expand to 675, the maximum one operator is allowed under West Virginia law.
 
 "Gaming comes in many forms," Wesson said. "It's not really fair to exclude the existing, in-state small businesses who desperately need the additional revenue from gaming just to help pay the light bill or a manager's salary."
 
 Wesson, a past president of the Amusement and Music Operators Association of West Virginia, said that organization backed legislative initiatives to bring slots to West Virginia's racetracks - even though the tracks were to buy and operate their own machines and there was no immediate benefit to association members.
 
 "We felt it would help our position in the future - and it has," Wesson said. "People are going to gamble, it doesn't matter what you do. The state might as well tap that revenue."
 
 He is betting that the prospects are good that gambling devices eventually will be legalized in Maryland as well. "Knowing the political climate in Maryland, I think it will eventually happen at some time," Wesson said. "I would certainly do anything I can do to help."
 
 
 
 
 
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