Dec. 3, 2001
 
 Let’s hear it for the staff at the Cumberland Times-News. Not the management team that runs the paper and creates the policies reflected in the editorial opinions the paper carries on its editorial page. But the staff, the worker bees who crank out a paper every day.
 
 These worker bees managed a coup of sorts, when they ran a couple of Associated Press stories last week that laid out the connection between the proposed “horse track” at Little Orleans and the introduction of slot machines to the state of Maryland. The stories also said right out loud that Cas Taylor was the man behind the whole scheme to bring a “horse track” - and slots - to Allegany County.
 
 This small triumph of truthful reporting over political control of the paper’s content was short lived, however, as the paper’s editorial on Sunday spouted the Cas Taylor line on the track and slots: the Associated Press is wrong, there is no connection between the two; this is about economic development, not slot machines; this will not result in increased social ills, blah, blah, blah.
 
 How sad is it that our newspaper would print blatant lies just to keep Cas Taylor’s schemes intact?
 
 The stance of the Times-News is shown for the fraud it is by other papers around the state and region - both the Baltimore Sun and the Washington Post laid out the slots connection quite clearly in news stories and editorials.
 
 The Post had a quote from a senator from Baltimore County, Sen. Bromwell, a Cas buddy who wrote the legislation that created the Allegany County track to begin with. Sen. Bromwell crowed that the granting of the Allegany County horse racing license to William Rickman, slot king from Delaware, is the first step in placing slots in Western Maryland.
 
 He went on to crow that full blown casinos would be next, because, really, what’s the difference?
 
 Our local paper, however, wants the citizens of Allegany County to think otherwise. Our local paper wants our community to believe it’s just about horse races, like we used to have at the Allegany County Fairgrounds in the 1950s.
 
 We’ve got news for the Times-News: the proposed operation in Little Orleans will bear no resemblance to Fairgo, and we know it. Horse racing has changed. It’s a dying industry, for one thing. The only way to prop it up is to bring in slots - or have the state subsidize it through state tax money.
 
 How anyone in their right mind can call building a horse track - given the shape of the industry - “economic development” is beyond us. This isn’t economic development. Bill Rickman himself has admitted that his track is only going to create about 25 local jobs. And those jobs are going to pay very low wages - like close to minimum wage. Mr. Rickman has also admitted that this track is actually going to lose money.
 
 That’s economic development? Are Cas Taylor and the Times-News nuts? Or do they really believe that the people who live here are just stupid?
 
 This is not about economic development. This is not about horse racing. This is about expanding legalized gambling in Maryland. And expanding it in Allegany County, along with all the social ills that accompany it.
 
 Where’s the free press when you need it?