Gambling proposal absent from budget

COLUMBUS (AP) — Gambling isn’t in the cards for the upcoming two-year budget, as far as House Democrats are concerned.

Their budget bill, a revision of Gov. Ted Strickland’s plan, doesn’t include a proposal to put lottery-run slot machines at horse racing tracks, said Keary McCarthy, spokesman for House Speaker Armond Budish, on Monday. A few lawmakers and the Ohio State Racing Commission have pushed for slots as a way to raise revenue in a very tight budget and to help out Ohio’s struggling race tracks.

The spending plan Democrats are expected to release today contains no tax increases and funnels more money to hospitals, food banks, nursing homes and poor school districts than Strickland had suggested, said Rep. Ron Amstutz, a ranking House Finance Committee member who was briefed on the budget plan Monday.

The details of how the Democrats planned to pay for the increases in some programs were unavailable Monday. One tactic included making tweaks to the way certain programs were funded to increase the amount of federal money Ohio could receive.

“We have to look at that very carefully and see whether the changes being proposed further weaken the budget’s sustainability or not,” said Amstutz, a Wooster Republican. “I’m not ready to make that judgment yet.”

The gambling proposal, which would have provided hundreds of millions of dollars in new revenue, didn’t have enough bipartisan support to be added in the budget revision.

Budish has signaled he is open to gambling proposals but said in January that he wasn’t sure revenue could begin flowing early enough to help the upcoming budget.

Strickland, a Democrat, said this month that he would probably veto any gambling proposal that wouldn’t need the approval of Ohio voters. Backers of the race track slots said their plan wouldn’t need voter approval because it would be under the purview of the Ohio Lottery.

Reps. Lou Blessing, a Republican from Cincinnati, and Todd Book, a Democrat from Portsmouth, still plan to push the gambling proposal as a standalone bill. But its inclusion in the budget plan would probably have given it its best chance of passage because gambling opponents would have had to decide whether it was worth voting against the entire budget.

“It seems to me that we’re missing a golden opportunity to come up with several hundred million dollars to provide real reforms,” said state Sen. Bill Seitz, a Republican from Cincinnati.

Strickland’s school-funding formula uses a heavy infusion of one-shot federal stimulus money. Republicans say the plan will be unsustainable in years when lawmakers have to rely only on state resources.

Seitz said he will push for the gambling proposal in the Senate if it succeeds in the House.

“I think there’s a small number of people in the legislative body who are completely sold on this idea and are creating mischief,” said David Zanotti, president of the antigambling Ohio Roundtable. “I don’t pick up that there’s real momentum.”

Ohio voters have rejected proposals to expand gambling four times in the past 20 years, most recently voting against a casino in Clinton County in southwest Ohio.

The Democrats’ budget plan contains an overhaul of Strickland’s school funding formula that funnels more money to the poorest districts.

The plan also increases a new fee on hospitals Strickland had proposed to help balance the budget, but channels federal Medicaid money back to hospitals to alleviate most of their losses. Hospitals stood to lose about $410 million under Strickland’s plan, but Budish said they would lose only about $127 million under his plan.

Hospitals have threatened major layoffs because of the new fee.

The House Democrats’ plan also increases the amount of money going to nursing homes.

The budget plan calls for aid to food banks to be increased to $9.5 million each year, McCarthy said. Strickland had proposed $8.5 million a year.

The Ohio Association of Second Harvest Foodbanks had requested $17 million each year because of increased demands due to the recession.

The budget removes prison sentencing reforms proposed by Strickland to shrink the prison population and save the state money.