Washington County Doesn’t Want Slot Machines 

Someone should have told the legislators of the state of Maryland that Washington County has no desire to bring in slot machines. There are those in the government that think that it would be a great place to bring them in, but according to the Washington County Commissioners have made it very clear that slot machines are not their idea, nor are they interested. 

The Washington County Delegation to the Maryland General Assembly suggested that perhaps they might want to start discussions regarding bringing slot machines to the county. They told Jim Hovis, Director of the Washington County Gaming Office, that there were local fraternal and veterans organizations that wanted to bring in slot machines to make more money for their groups. 

But the county commissioners said that they were not even remotely interested in bringing in slot machines. They said that they felt that the delegation and Hovis should have thought to ask them if they were interested in slot machines before they started talking about studies related to them. Commissioner William J. Wendell said that the state would probably end up taking the slot machine revenue instead of it going to the veterans groups, and Commissioner James Kercheval said that they could work on a study if they wanted to, but it wouldn’t do them any good. 

He said that no one in the county would be spending any time on their study, and that he was not going to present it to the county either way. Commissioner Terry Baker was the only one who thought that slot machines might be an idea, and that it might stop people from going to West Virginia to gamble, but his interest was only slightly higher than the others.