You can stand by Philadelphia's Tacony Bridge on Friday nights and "hear the sound of tens of millions of dollars being sucked out of the state," as area residents head east to pour their money into Atlantic City, N.J., casinos, former Philadelphia Mayor Ed Rendell said Tuesday during a campaign stop in Hermitage.

Rendell, a Democratic candidate for governor, wants to replace that sucking sound with the ching-ching of slot machines at Pennsylvania's five racetracks. Rendell said the $500 million the slots are projected to raise for the state would help fund education and reduce property taxes.

"It's worth the risk," said Rendell, who faces Auditor General Bob Casey Jr. in the May 21 primary. The latest polls show Rendell leading in the race.

Rendell said education and spurring economic development are his top two priorities.

Rendell said the state has a "moral responsibility" to narrow a $9,000 per-student annual spending gap between the richest and poorest school districts and to lessen the increasing burden of property taxes. Pennsylvania has the second-oldest population in the nation.

"We need to get our heads out of the sand. It's not that Pennsylvanians aren't gambling. They are," said Rendell. And -- aside from legal racetrack betting in Pennsylvania -- they're doing a lot of it in neighboring states like New Jersey, Maryland and West Virginia, he added.

The projected revenue from legalized slots makes up about a third of Rendell's plan to fund education. Another $1 billion or more could come from doubling taxes on packs of cigarettes and cutting wasteful government spending in Harrisburg, Rendell says.

The money could boost the state's share of funding to local schools "back over 50 percent right away," reduce districts' reliance on property taxes and cut property tax bills to a quarter of what they are, Rendell said.

The 50-percent state share used to be the legal minimum, but the law was repealed about two decades ago, he said. Today, the state foots about 35 percent of school districts' costs.

Rendell said he would push for the state to borrow about $1 billion in economic development bonds to spur development in a state that ranks 48th in job creation and next to last in population growth.

"We've had (fiscally) conservative governors for the past 25 years, so we have plenty of room to borrow," he said, noting that Massachusetts' debt-per-person is five times that of Pennsylvania's. "We should borrow money and use it to invest in growth."