Pressure is mounting for Maine’s Legislature to rubber stamp a plan that, within a year, could more than double the number of gaming companies operating in the Pine Tree State. Backers of racino plans for Calais and Biddeford are asking for a law change that would allow them to start building.

This is a bad idea, unfair to voters and to those who won their casino and racino campaigns in what has become the accepted fashion — they made their respective cases to statewide voters and were either approved or disapproved.

The pitch by backers of a casino and horse-racing track for Biddeford is that they already received statewide approval for their project way back in 2003. 

This is only partially true. It’s true voters approved two racetrack and slot machine facilities for Maine — one for the north and one for the south. The northern facility became Hollywood Slots Hotel and Raceway in Bangor. The southern facility, for lack of  local voter support — also required in the 2003 legislation — was never built.

After the statewide authorization in 2003, towns in both southern and northern Maine were given two months to pass local referenda authorizing a casino/racetrack. Bangor passed its plan but no town in southern Maine could muster the votes for a local project there.

Having failed to meet that provision in the law, southern Maine never opened a casino and missed its chance to do so. It’s that simple.

Seven years later, in 2010 and on the cusp of another casino project being approved in a statewide vote, Biddeford voters finally endorsed a casino plan for their city.

It’s the backers of that York County plan who now want to use the 2003 statewide vote as authorization for their plan.

They want to mix a 2003 statewide vote with a 2010 local vote and call it good.

To top it all off, they want to throw in a third casino — in Calais — one that was never approved in a statewide vote.

So two casinos approved in 2003 will become three casinos in 2011 — with only one of them ever really having met the requirements of the 2003 statewide vote.

This isn’t right and it is in defiance of the will of the voters. It’s also unfair to all who have fought the hard campaigns both for and against casino gambling in Maine.

It also overlooks a casino proposal for Lewiston. If lawmakers approve Biddeford and Calais without a statewide vote, to be fair, they also must approve Lewiston without a statewide vote.

“We expect them to treat us the same as Biddeford,” Stavros Mendros told the Sun Journal on Tuesday. “If we have to go to the voters, we will go to the voters because that was our plan to begin with, and we fully expected to go to the voters.”

We have no doubt those behind the Biddeford project have the best intentions for their city and state in mind. But in all fairness, their project should be vetted by the voters — not by the Legislature only.

The Legislature has consistently supported this view and Maine’s most recent governors have said they were inclined to follow the will of the voters on the casino issue.

Lawmakers must reject any rubber-stamping of casino proposals in Maine and stick with their consistent history of sending these measures out for local and statewide votes.

At a minimum, they must reject the notion that two more casinos can be authorized in Maine without statewide votes.

Votes authorizing casinos can’t be mixed and matched over time or the intent of the voters will be difficult to discern.

Those wanting casinos in Biddeford and Calais should follow the process Maine has used so far: Get signatures, get on the ballot, go to a vote.

To do otherwise would be unfair and unwise.

sthistle@sunjournal.com

The opinions expressed in this column reflect the views of the ownership and editorial board.