AUGUSTA – While the five nominees to the newly formed Gambling Control Board sailed through their committee confirmation hearings Tuesday, rough waters await them in a debate over how best to regulate the state’s new slots industry.

“We have to decide what kind of security and integrity we need and balance that against cost,” nominee George McHale said after his hearing before the Legislature’s Legal and Veterans Affairs Committee. “I don’t think it will be an easy call.”

The board, charged with overseeing the introduction of 1,500 slot machines to the Bangor Raceway, must settle a dispute between the Baldacci administration and slots operator Penn National Gaming. The two are at odds over how to best track and account for the tens of millions of dollars expected to flow through the Bangor slots each year.

Public Safety Commissioner Michael Cantara on Tuesday argued for an independent – and more costly -“central control” system to follow the money, millions of dollars of which is destined for state coffers.

“The integrity and accountability of gambling is not an issue on which I recommend we compromise,” Cantara told members of the Legal and Veterans Affairs Committee before the morning confirmation hearings.

Penn officials, concerned with the costs of such a cumbersome system, maintain a single, company-owned system, which could be monitored and programmed by the state, would meet all the state’s requirements for a fraction of the price.

“It’s an issue of new technology,” Penn spokesman Eric Schippers said, noting the gambling meccas of Las Vegas and Atlantic City successfully use the “central monitoring” systems.

Penn officials estimate the system advocated by Cantara would cost about $25 million over five years – more than five times the cost of the monitoring system.

The gambling board’s members, pending their expected confirmations by the full Senate next week, have been meeting since May as the Governor’s Gambling Control Advisory Council.

The council will meet Thursday to hear presentations on the different control systems from Penn National and Scientific Games International, the Georgia-based company that runs the state’s computerized lottery system.

McHale, chairman of the advisory council, said whichever system is chosen must be able to accommodate a second slots parlor in the state, should voters approve.

Bangor, because local voters there approved, is the only site eligible to host slots at its racetrack under the new law.

The prospect of a second slots operation, namely in southern Maine, did provide for some discord at Tuesday’s nomination hearings in Augusta.

Rep. Kevin Glynn, a South Portland Republican and staunch gambling opponent, was the only member of the Legal and Veterans Affairs Committee to vote against all of the nominees after asking if they would oppose attempts to expand gambling to southern Maine.

None of the nominees took a position on the question, but McHale made a prediction.

“I don’t have a dog in that fight,” McHale told Glynn. “But at some point we’re going to face that.”

Besides McHale, a radio broadcaster from Orrington, the other nominees approved by the committee Tuesday were: Peter Danton, a real estate broker and former state lawmaker from Saco; Jean Deighan, an investment consultant and lawyer from Bangor; Michael Peters, a small businessman from Dixfield; and W. Lawrence Hall, a retired state trooper.

Information about the Gambling Control Board can be found at http://www.state.me.us/dps/GambBoard.