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Casino backers ask judge to end restraining order, dismiss lawsuit
YOUNGSTOWN — Casino backers want a judge to dissolve a temporary restraining order and to dismiss a lawsuit against the casino promoters, but the lawyer who filed the suit said the case should proceed.
“The only way to answer the questions that have been raised is for the lawsuit to go forward so we can depose other petition circulators and the people who are directing this effort,” said Atty. David Betras, chairman of the Mahoning County Democratic Party, which filed the lawsuit last week.
Betras was referring to the deposition process, in which sworn testimony in a legal proceeding is taken from witnesses outside court but with the court’s authority.
The local Democratic Party sued the Ohio Jobs and Growth Committee, which is circulating petitions to get the casino proposal on the November ballot, and the party sought the order to stop the petitions from being circulated.
The party presented a videotape on which petition circulators are seen and heard falsely stating that the casino proposal isn’t a constitutional amendment, that a casino would be built in Youngstown and that it would create factory and industrial jobs.
To get the measure on the ballot, the committee must submit to the secretary of state about 404,000 valid petition signatures from at least 44 of the state’s 88 counties by July 1.
The proposed constitutional amendment would allow one casino each to be built in Columbus, Cleveland, Cincinnati and Toledo.
On Friday, Judge James C. Evans of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court issued a TRO directing petition circulators not to misrepresent the proposal, but he declined to block circulation of the casino petition.
The pro-casino committee filed the motions to dissolve the restraining order and dismiss the suit Tuesday, and Judge Evans has not ruled on them.
In its motion to dissolve the TRO, the committee said it fired the two errant petition circulators on the videotape and that the Democratic Party “has not shown immediate or irreparable harm.”
The committee argued in its motion to dismiss that only the Ohio Supreme Court has jurisdiction in this matter, adding the suit should have been filed in Columbus because that is where the circulators gave the erroneous information on the videotape.
Betras said he’d fight the gambling initiative because it doesn’t include a casino in the Mahoning Valley, and he said he filed suit here because the issue impacts the Valley.
The pro-casino committee said its proposal would create 20,000 Ohio jobs and generate $1 billion in private investment; $200 million in up-front licensing fees to the state, which would be designated for job training and work-force development; and $600 million in annual casino tax revenue, which would go primarily to counties and public school districts statewide.
milliken@vindy.com