Penn National’s license request pushed back until next month

AUGUSTA – Deliberations on Penn National Gaming’s application for a harness racing license will resume next month.

Talks ended abruptly Tuesday, and the Pennsylvania-based company and the Attorney General’s Office agreed to wait until mid-October before moving forward with the licensing process.

Maine State Police will wait until then to present its findings on whether Penn National meets financial and moral standards required to operate a track.

The licensing delays will not affect Penn National’s timetable to open Maine’s first racino because the company does not plan to start operating slot machines in Bangor until mid-2006, Penn National spokesman Eric Schippers said.

“We are still on track. I don’t see any problems caused by the delays,” he said after deliberations ended Tuesday.

Penn National last winter received a conditional license to operate Bangor Raceway. The company now needs a permanent license before it can apply for a second license to operate up to 1,500 slot machines at the raceway.

The complexity of regulating slot machines, state officials said, caused the Maine Harness Racing Commission at its meeting Tuesday to put off action on Penn National’s application for a racing license.

State police investigators are completing a suitability report that the commission will use to determine whether Penn National meets the state’s licensing standards. But the findings will not be discussed until Oct. 14, the date of the new hearing.

Officials provided few details Tuesday about the unresolved issues.

Assistant Attorney General John Richards would say only the state asked Penn National for additional information about the company. The two sides also are discussing concerns Penn National has about what information should be made public and what information only regulators should see.

For example, Penn National, a publicly traded company, is willing to provide balances and identification numbers for the personal accounts of company officials and their families.

It does not, however, want this information made available to the public. The same may be true of proprietary information that would interest competitors.

Richards said the state is trying to establish a fair and consistent process, not just for Penn National but for companies that apply for licenses in the future. In the past, he said, the licensing of tracks has been easier because the operators for Maine’s two commercial tracks, Scarborough Downs and Bangor Raceway, were well-known to the commissioners.

This changed last November when in a statewide vote Maine residents approved the operation of slots at the two tracks. Bangor gave local approval for the machines. Scarborough did not.

Before that vote, Las Vegas developer Shawn Scott applied for a racing license, leading to a contentious set of hearings where Scott’s business practices and associates, and the state’s investigation of them, were challenged. Penn National bought out Scott before the commission ruled.

Since then, the responsibility to investigate would-be harness racing operators has shifted to the state police. Richards said that the Attorney General’s Office and Penn National will work on refining the process in the coming weeks.