Get The Facts
UNACCEPTABLE: CUTTING SERVICES OR RAISING TAXES
Failure to pass the referendum will lead to cuts in services and/or higher taxes – both completely unacceptable options that will harm the economic and job-creation environment of our great state.
THE SOLUTION: VOTE FOR THE REFERENDUM
The long-term fiscal responsibility of the November 4 referendum will:
- Dedicate 48.5% to 51% of total annual gross revenues to the Education Trust Fund.
- Produce, by fiscal year 2012, approximately $660.4 million in new education funding.
- Support the funding mandates of the Thornton Act, the Geographic Cost of the Education Index, as well for providing adequate funding of teacher pensions.
- Help prevent future tuition increases through the Higher Education Investment Fund (HEIF), the first ever dedicated source of funding for higher education in Maryland’s history.
- Help expand access to health care. Maryland’s Health Reform Initiative will eventually cover an additional 100,000 Maryland citizens for comprehensive health insurance.
- Benefit taxpayers because it is “one of the most taxpayer-friendly proposals in the nation.”
- Represent only a minor expansion of existing gaming, since it will authorize no more than five video-lottery-terminal facilities in very specific areas, and no more than 15,000 video lottery terminals.
- Be closely regulated by state authorities on a non-partisan nine-member State Lottery Commission. Unlike in some states, the State of Maryland will own and lease all of the video lottery terminals. In addition, the State of Maryland will maintain sole access to the slots’ central computer system in order to prevent fraud.
- Prevent further expansion of gaming in Maryland. The so-called “slippery slope” is impossible because the referendum is a Constitutional amendment that prevents any additional expansion of gaming anywhere in Maryland without a future voter-approved Constitutional amendment.
- Required license applicants to invest $25 million in construction and related costs for every 500 VLTs proposed in their bids.
- Dedicate 1.5% of gross proceeds to support small, minority and women-owned businesses in Maryland.
