This article by The Capital Gazette documents two think tanks’ research that explains how casinos have gotten their licensing fees much lower than one might expect, taking hundreds of millions of dollars from the state for which taxpayers have to foot the bill. In Maryland, the licensing fees for the new Prince George casino should total over $500 million. However, Maryland will only receive about $18 million- a fraction of the money it could be receiving. Thus, Maryland taxpayers will have to pitch in the missing hundreds of millions of dollars that the casino got out of paying.

2012 Think Tank- MD taxpayers dealt bad hand for casino fees