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Home > Blogs > Ohio politics > Archives > 2009 > October > 05
Monday, October 5, 2009
Cordray approves referendum petition
LetOhioVote.org’s petition circulators will hit the streets of Ohio in a matter of days after Attorney General Richard Cordray on Monday, Oct. 5, approved their petition language, spokesman Carlo LoParo said.
LetOhioVote successfully waged a court battle for the right to put Gov. Ted Strickland’s slot machine plan to a referendum vote in November 2010. The group seeks to repeal the language in the state budget bill that would have put 17,500 slot machines at Ohio’s seven horse racetracks by May 2010 to generate $933 million for K-12 education.
Strickland has since pulled the plug on the plan and Senate President Bill Harris, R-Ashland, is now recommending that lawmakers repeal the slots language from the budget bill.
But until that’s done, LoParo said, LetOhioVote will push ahead on the referendum. They have until Dec. 20 to collect 241,366 valid signatures from registered voters.
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Strickland scolded by Senate president
Senate President Bill Harris, R-Ashland, scolded Gov. Ted Strickland, a Democrat, for pushing to put slots at horse tracks without a vote of the people.
“…Your foray into this VLT effort has proven to be costly, confusing and contentious,” Harris wrote in a letter to Strickland that was released Monday, Oct. 5.
The governor canceled his plan to put 17,500 slot machines at the seven tracks to raise $933 million for K-12 funding. The plan had been part of the state budget bill but got sidelined when the Ohio Supreme Court said it was subject to a potential referendum in November 2010.
Now Harris says it’s in the state’s best interest to repeal the budget language that addresses VLTs. That would cancel any need for a referendum.
“I would ask for your commitment that any future effort to utilize VLTs as a revenue source will involve an open and deliberative process and most importantly, a vote of the people,” Harris told Strickland.
Strickland is asking lawmakers to cancel the last phase-in of a 21 percent across the board income tax cut as a way to make up the lost VLT revenues.
Meanwhile, Columbus-based Progress Ohio, a liberal group, and Cincinnati-based Citizens for Community Values, a conservative group, put aside their past differences and joined forces to oppose Issue 3. The proposed constitutional amendment to build casinos in Toledo, Cleveland, Cincinnati and Columbus would increase crime, gambling addiction and other social ills, the two groups said at a joint press conference.
Anti-gambling expert John Kindt, a professor of business and legal policy at the University of Illinois, said the casinos will increase crime by about 10 percent and bankruptcies by more than 18 percent, while gambling addiction near the casinos will double.
Kindt, who appeared at the same press conference, pointed to a three volume study that academics worked on for 10 years to back up his claims. “The bottom line is: don’t do it,” Kindt said.
