Advocates seeking more revenue for problem gambling will wait at least another year – Maryland Daily Record

Sports betting contributes millions of dollars monthly — $5.7 million in April — to Maryland’s public education plans, but a push to divert 1% of the revenue to help fight problem gambling has met a lack of consensus in the legislature.

The legislature set up a problem gambling fund in 2007 with the legalization of casino gambling. But as the state has rolled out other forms of betting, lawmakers haven’t added revenue streams for the fund.

Unclaimed prize money from in-person sports betting goes to problem gambling resources, but 98% of money wagered on sports in Maryland is through mobile apps, which automatically pay out winners.

Longtime state Sen. Katherine Klausmeier, a Baltimore County Democrat who has pushed for 1% of the state’s sports wagering proceeds, or roughly $3.5 million annually, to go to problem gambling resources, said the state has an obligation to provide necessary support to those suffering from an addiction.

“Problem gambling has become widespread, and I think so much more since sports gambling,” Klausmeier, also vice chair of the Senate Finance Committee, said in a phone interview Friday. “I would like to have the opportunity to help those people who are in the midst of having gambling problems.”

Both the state Senate and House of Delegates voted during this year’s 90-day session to distribute a percentage of sports betting revenue to problem gambling resources, but a last-minute disagreement derailed the bill in the session’s final hours.

Klausmeier said she didn’t know the details of the disagreement, and neither of the top Democrats whose apparent differences killed the bill — Senate Budget and Taxation Committee Chair Guy Guzzone and House Ways and Means Committee Chair Vanessa Atterbeary — could immediately be reached for comment by phone call Friday.

Since its inception in December 2021, sports betting has brought in $75.7 million for public education, according to the Maryland Lottery and Gaming Control Agency.

Hundreds of millions of dollars from the state’s six casinos also go to public schools, including nearly $623 million last fiscal year.

Sports betting revenue goes to a dedicated fund for the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future, a plan to boost education systems and student performance statewide by starting childhood education at an earlier age, increasing pay for teachers and bolstering career and technical education opportunities.

Lawmakers have set aside money to cover the Blueprint for the next three years, but the plan lacks a permanent funding stream and is expected to be a major driver of multibillion-dollar operating budget deficits in later years.

Top Democrats have maintained full-throated support for the plan despite the fiscal uncertainty, and last year they shied from taking 1% of sports wagering proceeds from the Blueprint.

With annual fees from slot machines and table games, problem gambling proceeds usually reach between $4 million and $5 million each year.

Between $2 million and $2.4 million goes to the Maryland Center of Excellence on Problem Gambling to pay for a 24-hour helpline, an outreach program that includes a voluntary exclusion list, treatment and prevention programs offered for free or at a reduced cost, and staff research.

Director of Operations Mary Drexler has said that, while the center has generally had a large enough budget to assist the more than 600 people seeking help at any given time, it lacks money for adequate preventative measures like public service campaigns and advertising.

She said those services would help the center inform people suffering from a gambling disorder about the resources available to them.

Drexler wrote to lawmakers in February that a dedicated funding stream from sports betting proceeds would help the center boost marketing to counter the gambling industry’s multibillion-dollar campaigns.

It would also help the center attract more treatment providers to the state’s no-cost network and launch public awareness campaigns to target people who are especially prone to problem gambling, like veterans with PTSD, Drexler wrote.