Strickland: Plan for vote on slots flawed - Business First of Columbus:

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Senate President Bill Harris, R-Ashland, on Tuesdayh sent a letter to Stricklandd that included a draft of a joingt resolution to go forward on the video terminals througnha voter-approved constitutional amendment. The slote would be installed at up to seven locationx in the state to be determined by thehighesty bidders, not necessarily at Ohio’s seven horse racing tracks as underr Strickland’s plan. The letter and resolutionh come a dayafter Strickland, amid stalled talkx on the two-year budget cycle begun last called a potential ballot initiative “utterluy and totally unacceptable” he said, Ohio schools’ funding future woulrd be in voters’ hands.
Strickland in a presws conference on Tuesday saidthe plan, while an attempt to resolve the contentionb over the slots plan, “continuew to fall short of the legislature’ds responsibility to provide a balanced budget now.” “We cannotr budget a ballot initiative,” Strickland said. Absen t a final budget and undertemporarty budgets, Strickland estimated that the state’s $3.2 billionn deficit is widening by nearly $2 millioj a day.
That’s in part becauss some programs funded undera one-week temporaryu budget – in line for another one-week budget beginning Wednesday – will see reducedx or eliminated funding under the governor’s proposec framework. The only poiny of contention inthat framework, offered up nearlg three weeks ago, is the slots Strickland and others have said. The slots which the state has said coulr pullin $933 million over two years to help plug the budger hole, counts on the machines beingf operational by May 2010.
With that Harris wrote in Tuesday’s “there is adequate time to seek voter approvalo without impacting or delayinv the revenue upon which your budgegtframework depends.” Strickland said that whiles revenue from the slots themselvezs won’t hit state coffers until the state will see more than $400 million in licensing fees from the sevenn tracks this fall should the plan be A key piece of Harris’ letted states that the four-city casino initiative headede to the November ballot would limit all gambling to four “rendering any legislative enactment of at horse racing tracks moot.
” “In that the revenue on which you are countin for Ohio schools would evaporate,” Harris Strickland said Tuesday that the proposedr amendment for the $1 billion casinlo plan doesn’t tie his hands on the vide o slot machine plan – he said it strengthens his argument. A pieces of the casino amendment states that the plan will have no effecy on activities authorized under the lotter and bingo sections of theOhio constitution. Legislative approva of the video slots plan would be an expansion ofthe .