Having demonstrated that it can play Maine like James Bond at a baccarat table, Penn National Gaming, owner of Hollywood Slots at Bangor, is now asking lawmakers to change the statutory formula used to collect taxes from the racino. There’s not a thing wrong with that.

But it also wasn’t a huge mistake for lawmakers last week to look at racino as a source of new revenue, except that they did it in a typically ham-handed way. Penn National may not have understood that when lawmakers propose to take millions more dollars from a business based purely on the grounds that they think they can get away with it, this is their way of beginning a conversation. Lawmakers, for their part, didn’t understand that Penn National also has a unique conversation opener that includes truckloads of angry construction workers.

The nominal thought behind this dispute was whether the Legislature would be violating some pact if it took 1 percent more slot revenues. This was a bad idea for several reasons, primarily because legislators are supposed to be trying to reduce the overall tax burden in Maine not increase it. Lawmakers also didn’t appear to know much about the business of gambling, so were monkeying around with it unaware of what effect they would have. (Not that this has stopped previous legislatures. See health care, for instance.) But their actions were also something short of the Pillage of Bangor.

So there was the work stoppage, the Augusta protest, the threats, the city meeting and the backing down, and now that Penn National wants to make that statutory change, it is the anti-gamblers’ turn to hyperventilate. Readers could conclude which word Dennis Bailey, executive director of CasinosNo!, really wanted to use when he said of Penn National’s request, “Haven’t we learned in hostage situations that you don’t negotiate with people who make threats?” Apparently, if Maine negotiates, the threateners win.

When all this calms down, the gain will be that the Legislature (and all businesses in Maine) will know what uncomfortable consequences could await future attempted tax grabs. Penn National will know it won’t always have the stronger hand when playing against the Legislature and may adjust its strategy, perhaps with a less dramatic touch, accordingly.