43
Some funding for racino communities heads to governor’s desk
By ROBERT CONNELLY
COLUMBUS
Language in the state’s biennial budget for dollars going to six racino host communities for two years has made it through a conference committee.
That means $500,000 would come to the six eligible communities for the next two years, including Austintown Township. Half of it would be paid by the operator owning the facility within that community with the other half coming from the state relocation fund.
Penn National Gaming Inc., which owns the Hollywood Gaming racinos in Dayton and Austintown, will pay $150 million into that relocation fund over a 10-year period for the right to move tracks from Toledo to Dayton and from Grove City to Austintown.
“I feel very confident now that, if it made it through the conference committee, that the governor will leave it in there,” said Ken Carano, an Austintown Township trustee. “I think it’s a lot less than maybe it should be, but at this point it will certainly help Austintown.”
There was a change in the language, however, that states: “It is the intent of the General Assembly that these payments are made in full, complete, and total satisfaction of any payment contemplated or required by any version of the provision.”
“I don’t know what the legal ramifications or the legal translation of that would be if it was challenged,” said Ohio Senate Minority Leader Joe Schiavoni of Boardman, D-33rd.
It’s his belief that language means that the payments, which were promised through a memorandum of understanding in the 2011 racinos bill, satisfies that original language.
After hearing of that change, Carano said he was more confident that this would be signed off by Republican Gov. John Kasich. “I would say at this point, it sounds like this is the final say [because it passed] through both of the houses,” Carano said.
Carano helped organize a racino summit in March in Columbus that featured state and local officials from the six eligible racino host communities.
“What the hope is, especially from the other host racino locations, is that there will be the possiblity of the next assembly to be able to come up with other things that will supplement” what “we get now,” Carano said. “There’s a strong feeling from the legislators that they will present new items in the new budget to see if there is some way they can get us new money.”