VIDEO SLOTS Tracks consider forcing the issue

Today is the deadline to put the issue before voters.
By JEFF ORTEGA
VINDICATOR CORRESPONDENT
COLUMBUS -- If the Legislature fails to act by year's end to place the issue of video slot machines at horse-racing tracks before voters statewide, the tracks could try a ballot issue themselves, a racing industry representative said Tuesday.
"Going to the ballot through the initiative process is an option that our clients would consider," said Jack Gregg Haught, a horse-racing industry representative and a lawyer for Thistledown Racing Club near Cleveland.
State officials trying to broker a legislative deal by today's deadline to place the issue of video slots before voters statewide on the March ballot reported little progress.
"I don't have a lot of faith that we're going to work anything out," House Speaker Larry Householder said.
"I think the time frame is a difficulty, and I think you have to have willing participants to compromise," said Householder, a Glenford Republican. "Right now, we're trying to find willing participants."
"People were sticking to their guns on a lot of this," said state Sen. Louis W. Blessing Jr., a Cincinnati Republican and the prime sponsor of the video-slots legislation that passed the Senate in October.
Senate action
The Senate passed a proposed constitutional amendment for the March ballot that would ask Ohio voters to approve video slot machines at Ohio's seven horse-racing tracks.
Senators also approved implementing legislation.
Under the Senate-passed legislation, most of the video-slots proceeds would fund four-year scholarships to Ohio public and private universities for the top 10 percent of the state's high school graduates.
But Householder has said he wants the state's take from the video gaming machines that can play traditional slot games as well as video poker and keno to go toward eliminating the temporary 1-cent sales tax increase passed in the two-year, $48.8 billion state budget.
Efforts to reach a compromise failed, including a proposal from state Sen. Kevin J. Coughlin, a Cuyahoga Falls Republican and the chairman of the Senate committee that studied video slot machines.
"What I was pushing for was to do the Senate version, do the scholarship plan and use any surplus revenue from the slots for tax relief," Coughlin said.
Under the Senate-passed legislation and pending voter approval, revenue from the video slot machines would have been split between the tracks and state coffers.
Legislative analysts estimate the state would get between $200 million and $500 million a year from video lottery terminals.
What's next
Backers of the video-slots proposal see the issue lingering, despite Tuesday's failure to reach a legislative deal.
"I suspect one of two things will happen -- either the tracks or another group or a combination of groups will gather enough signatures to put it on the ballot, or the General Assembly may take it up in the spring," said Blessing.
"I think it passes either way," Blessing said.
If the racetracks were to pursue a ballot issue, they would have to gather valid signatures by Aug. 4 from at least 10 percent of the voters who cast ballots in the last gubernatorial election, the Ohio secretary of state's office said.
According to the secretary of state, about 3.2 million Ohioans voted in the 2002 gubernatorial elections.
State lawmakers also have until Aug. 4 to place an issue on the November statewide ballot.
Republican Gov. Bob Taft has vowed to oppose a slot-machine proposal if it makes it onto the state ballot.
Twice in the 1990s, Ohio voters rejected proposals to legalize casino gambling in the state.