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$500,000 question: Who’ll pay township?
By ROBERT CONNELLY
AUSTINTOWN
State Senate Minority Leader Joe Schiavoni said lawmakers know Dayton and Austintown deserve the $500,000 promised to their communities through the state’s racino bills.
But who pays them and what bill an amendment would be attached to before the Dec. 31 deadline is not known at this point.
“I think everybody understands that this needs to happen,” said Schiavoni, of Boardman, D-33rd. “I think everybody has a different idea for who has to pay this money and how and for how long.”
Schiavoni has spearheaded the effort and has been working with state Sen. Bill Beagle, R-Tipp City, to get both communities the funds that were promised to them.
Last week, Beagle said, “We’re just trying to get it fixed in the most expeditious way we can.”
The General Assembly is scheduled to end its 2014 session Thursday.
The $500,000 payments to Austintown Township and to Dayton are to be made by Dec. 31, but how long those payments will go for is being discussed now.
“I’m arguing for as long as there is money in the relocation fund,” the payments should be made, Schiavoni said.
Those payments are earmarked, half for infrastructure and half for general fund, the same as the $2 million already received by each area.
In a draft of a potential amendment to House Bill 490, which has several amendments, Schiavoni wants the money to come out of the state’s track relocation fund, which Penn National Gaming Inc. has already paid into for its track relocations to Dayton and Austintown. Both cost Penn $75 million.
HB 490 initially resulted from the criminal dumping of 30,000 gallons of oil and gas drilling waste in the Mahoning River near Youngstown last year, and it seeks stiffer penalties for oil, gas and brine disposal violations. That bill was not voted on last week in the state Senate. The state House already has passed the bill.
Schiavoni had spoken of adding the racino amendment to HB 490, but both he and Beagle are looking elsewhere now.
“There are some concerns that the bill [HB 490] is drifting from its original purpose,” Beagle said last week.
The office of Gov. John Kasich has said the money should come from Penn National.
“Truthfully, no one wants to pay the money. Everyone wants everyone else to pay the money, but that’s just how these business conversations go,” Schiavoni said.
The state Legislature’s last scheduled day is Thursday. If it still has pending business, it could convene Dec. 17 and 18.
“The work is being done. We just don’t have a final product,” Schiavoni said.