OHIO LEGISLATURE Slot debate halts over drug plan

The parties couldn't agree on how to spend the state's share of the proceeds.
By JEFF ORTEGA
VINDICATOR CORRESPONDENT
COLUMBUS -- A deal has fallen apart to insert a Democratic senator's proposal for prescription-drug discounts into legislation that would ask Ohio voters to authorize video-slot machines at horse-racing tracks.
"I'm disappointed. I'm frustrated," Democratic state Sen. Robert F. Hagan of Youngstown, D-33rd, said Tuesday.
Hagan's comment came moments after a Senate committee abruptly stopped debate on the video-slots legislation.
With state lawmakers hoping to recess this week for summer, the action by the Senate State & amp; Local Government & amp; Veterans Affairs Committee means there will likely be no legislative movement to place the issue of video-slot machines on the statewide ballot until the fall at the earliest.
State Sen. Kevin Coughlin, a Cuyahoga Falls Republican and the committee chairman, said Republicans and Democrats couldn't agree on how to spend the state's share of the proceeds of video slots, if voters approve.
"In our caucus, there wasn't enough support to do a prescription-drug process now," Coughlin said.
"We want to do [video slots]. We want to do it with prescription drugs, scholarships and school construction," said state Sen. Marc Dann of Liberty Township, D-32nd, the ranking Democrat on the committee.
Minority Democrats had been in talks with the GOP to include in the slots legislation a scaled-down version of Hagan's bill to provide prescription-drug discounts to uninsured or underinsured Ohioans.
Hagan's bill has been pending in another Senate committee.
But Coughlin said there appeared to be too few votes to pass the video-slots legislation with the prescription-drug provisions on the Senate floor.
"We couldn't get a guarantee from the minority party that we would get any floor votes with the absence of a prescription-drug component, and that's a problem for us," Coughlin said.
Allotting the money
Coughlin said Republicans wanted a commitment for Democratic votes for a video-slots proposal that would contain a provision for college scholarships for needy students.
Under the provisions Democrats had sought, the state and the race tracks would generally split proceeds from the video-slot machines, if they're approved by voters, roughly about $500 million annually.
Under the compromise, 30 percent of the state's take from video slots would have funded college scholarships and 20 percent would have paid for primary- and secondary-school building construction.
The remaining 50 percent of the state's share would have funded a prescription-drug discount for Ohioans aged 55 or older with incomes up to 185 percent of the federal poverty level, under the Democrats' provisions.
The compromise proposal would have also created a prescription discount program to help cover Ohioans not eligible for other government or private insurance by using bulk purchasing.
If the Senate moves forward with the video-slots legislation, it will be in the fall, possibly for the March ballot, Coughlin said. The Legislature would have to pass a measure by three-fifths majority in each chamber by Dec. 3 to get it on the statewide March ballot.