Members of the Legislature's Appropriations Committee may allow Hollywood Slots to up the ante in Bangor. The cash-starved panel is looking for new revenue to offset cutbacks in state programs and might consider allowing the racino to offer table games. Although the table games could boost overall revenues to the state's general fund to about $15 million dollars, the plan still faces opposition from the the governor's office.

For the last two weeks, members of the Legislature's Appropriations Committee have been calling back all of the legislative policy committees to hear their ideas about alternative plans that would offset program cuts in the governor's $438 million dollar budget revision.

Mostly, the Appropriations Committee has heard a list of reasons about why the other committee members can't go along with the governor's plan and very little in the way of alternatives that don't include taxes. State Sen. Debra Plowman says that when her Legal and Veterans Affairs Committee meets with the number-crunching panel, they'll hear something new.

"I think we're about the only committee that's pursuing avenues of new revenue that don't have anything to do with taxation," she says. Plowman says her committee is bringing a number of new gambling proposals to the appropriations panel including a new online Keno game, a new big jackpot lottery ticket game and --perhaps the most controversial -- a plan to allow table casino games, like poker craps and roulette, at Hollywood Slots in Bangor -- the state's sole gaming complex.

In addition to a $5 million license fee, Hollywood Slots representatives maintain that the tables would generate about $1.4 million in additional revenue to the state's general fund to go along with the $9 million the state currently collects from the company in fees and slots revenue.

Plowman says the company's request is consistent with Maine's image. "It's another way of raising money through entertainment purposes, that's Maine, we're a tourism industry," she says. "People will come, and more people will come, they think, if there are table games. The one thing we did do is make sure that all the money -- no cascade, all the money -- from those table games flows to the state of Maine. It's not a huge amount yet, but, you know, when it catches on, it can work into something."

Unlike other communties that struck down local referendum questions that asked whether they wanted to host a slot machine complex, Bangor anted up immediately.

"Bangor does support it, they jumped through all the hoops, and they're asking to expand like any other company would expand," says state Sen. Nancy Sullivan, a Biddeford Democrat who chairs the Legal and Veterans Affairs Committee. She says the additional revenue the table games could provide would soften some of the cuts in the governor's budget.

"When we're cutting the funds for mental health, when we're cutting funds for people in nursing homes, I think it is poor judgement not to at least delve in and see if that money that people are using for discretionary money -- I know there are some disadvantages, but, you know what? There are people that drink too much and they should be spending that money at home. But we can't legislate that," Sullivan says.

"We would like to take a look at it, see what it does -- we know in this case the Committee on Legal and Veterans Affairs has examined this," says state Sen. Bill Diamond, chair of the Appropriations Committee. Diamond says Hollywood Slots has a good track record with the state and that now is a good time to look at new proposals.

"It's a pipe dream -- you're just taking money away from one segment of the economy and putting it into table games. This will not be new revenue," says Dennis Bailey, of Casinos No!, who has fought every attempt to expand casino gambling in Maine, a proposal that he perceives as anything but true economic development.

David Farmer, Gov. John Baldacci's deputy chief of staff, says the governor agrees and would only sign off on the plan if it had the support of Maine citizens. "He believes that if you're going to have an expansion of gambling, that it would need to go to the voters and be approved by the voters, much like racino was initially," Farmer says. "Voters approved the racino, and it had limitations that included just allowing slot machines. If folks want that to be amended, the governor thinks it should go out to voters again. But he does not support the introduction of new games at the racino in Bangor."

The table games proposal and other gambling expansions are expected to be discussed Friday by the Appropriations Committee.