BALTIMORE -- If November's slots referendum doesn't pass, the remaining option is more cuts, according to Gov. Martin O'Malley (D-Baltimore).
 
"I don't think there is any political will for going back to revenues, because we've already looked at that," O'Malley told PolitickerMD.com at the state Democratic Party's One Week to Victory 2008 Gala on Monday.
 
Voters will decide in November if the state constitution should be amended to allow up to 15,000 slot machine installations at five different locations across the state. O'Malley has thrown his support behind the controversial measure, arguing it's the best way to address the state's growing fiscal woes in the midst of a national financial crisis and a roughly $432 million state-level budget shortfall.
 
In mid-October, the Board of Public Works approved $345 million in budget cuts after O'Malley asked state agencies to indentify cuts of up to 5 percent.

"After four years of stopgap measures and now this last 21 months of really tough restoration of fiscal discipline we're down to things that none of us wanted to cut," O'Malley said of the Board of Public Works meeting held earlier this month.
 
O'Malley said the cuts would affect the most vulnerable citizens, public safety, higher education and college affordability.

"I mean, that's what we're down to now," O'Malley said, pointing to a structural deficit as a primary reason for the problem.
 
O'Malley argued that while Gov. Bob Ehrlich (R-Baltimore) was in office, government was investing at too fast a rate for the revenues being generated. And after $2 billion in cuts, and $1.3 billion in new revenues as a result of the 2007 special session, O'Malley said a national downturn brought a "whole new wave of red ink on top of that."
 
But Ehrlich, who O'Malley defeated in 2006 after one-term in office, attacked O'Malley's fiscal policies earlier this month. Ehrlich has not ruled out a 2010 rematch and argues O'Malley's tax increases and wild spending habits are problematic.
 
O'Malley, however, says Ehrlich was the problem.
 
"He had four years to bring about less spending and he didn't do it," O'Malley told PolitickerMD.com. "We've done more in 20 months than he did in four years."