2 officials oppose proposal

State officials say video slots will bring in $600 million a year.
By JEFF ORTEGA
VINDICATOR CORRESPONDENT
COLUMBUS -- A renewed effort to ask Ohio voters to authorize more than 2,000 video slot machines at each of the state's seven horse-racing tracks is drawing renewed opposition from two state officials.
Gov. Bob Taft and Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell, both Republicans, say they both remain opposed to the possibility of video lottery terminals -- electronic gaming machines that can play traditional slot games and other games -- at the racetracks. "It basically amounts to casino gambling," the governor said recently.
"I don't think it's the way that Ohio needs to go in the future. I'll be opposed to it if it goes to the ballot," Taft added.
"It's a diversion of real economic development which is attracting capital to our state," Blackwell said Sunday on the cable news program "Capitol Square."
Blackwell, the state's chief elections officer and a potential GOP candidate for governor in 2006, said he, too, plans to fight the proposal if it makes it onto the November ballot.
Aiming for November
State lawmakers, primarily led by state Rep. Bill Seitz, a Cincinnati Republican, are circulating a plan to place before voters the plan for video slots. Backers want the Legislature to pass a proposed constitutional amendment authorizing video slots this May in time to put the idea before voters this fall.
House Speaker Larry Householder says it's too early to tell whether backers will be successful.
"We'll have to see what [Seitz] ends up having," said Householder, a Glenford Republican. "If he can find something that's acceptable to the majority of members of the House, compromises worked with the Senate, we just have to know what it is before I know where we're at."
Where money would go
Of the state's share, which officials estimate to be $600 million annually, 50 percent would be earmarked as scholarships for the 5 percent of high school graduates to attend Ohio public and private colleges, Seitz and other officials said.
About 40 percent of the state's share of the proceeds would be earmarked for future increases in the state's base funding for public schools, and 10 percent of the proceeds would be marked for early-childhood programs, officials said.
Seitz said lawmakers are exploring the idea as an amendment to legislation that already has passed the Senate. Seitz said he hopes to have a proposal passed in the House by mid-May before lawmakers leave Columbus for summer recess.