Frederick is in and Ocean City is out as a location for slot-machine gambling, a House of Delegates subcommittee recommended Wednesday. Harford County was also added to Cecil County as a potential slot site in the northeast Interstate 95 corridor.

The full House of Delegates finally begins debate today on Gov. Martin O’Malley’s plan to let voters decide in a referendum next year on slots gambling at five Maryland locations.

Subcommittee Chairman Frank Turner, D-Howard, had been pushing the Frederick location all week as a way to capture the slot-machine dollars flowing into Charlestown track in West Virginia.

The site at Ocean Downs racetrack near Ocean City “might not be a really viable location,” Turner said, because it has high tourist traffic only three or four months a year.

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“I think Frederick is a viable solution,” Del. Craig Rice, D-Montgomery, and the four other members of the committee agreed.

Before the committee acted, O’Malley reacted coolly to the change in locations.

“I was grateful that the Senate passed the bill that we gave them on the slots issue and they did so without changing it much, and I would hope that the House would do the same thing,” O’Malley said. “I hope that they don’t change it too much.”

Frederick County was a site proposed in a slots bill that passed the House in 2005 but never cleared the Senate. Senate President Thomas Mike Miller said Wednesday morning he still did not favor a Frederick site. The county has passed zoning rules that would keep gambling out.

The committee also changed some allocations of revenues from slots that are expected to generate more than $500 million for a new state education trust fund after the video lottery terminals are up and running.

O’Malley and House Speaker Michael Busch are still working to round up the 85-vote super-majority the slots referendum bill needs in the House.

“We’re hoping they’ll let the people decide this issue that has divided us for far too long,” O’Malley said. “I think we get closer every day. I think people want to resolve this,” calling slots the “monkey wrench in the cogs of consensus and compromise.”

llazarick@baltimoreexaminer.com