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Ohio’s horseracing venues were expecting to get Video Lottery Terminals due to an executive order by Governor Ted Strickland. These Video Lottery Terminals (VLT’s) are supposed to bring in the much needed cash to balance the Ohio budget, but it looks like opposition might hinder the action.

Strickland wants to set up 2500 VLT’s at each of the states seven horseracing tracks.  It is expected that the machines will bring in $933 million over a two year period of time.  Included in that number are the licensing fees for each machine over a 10 year period and a portion of the machines’ profits.

Opponents are working on a challenge to stop the VLT machines from ever going into play.  It is said that profit splitting with the race track owners would be a constitutional violation as lottery proceeds are to be spent on education.  In this plan half of the proceeds would go to education and the other half would stay at the race track to enhance race track budgets.  The Ohio council of Churches and the United Methodist Church are leading this opposition.  Interestingly enough, Governor Strickland is an ordained Methodist minister.

The church groups are meeting with the American Policy Round Table and are trying to create a strategy on which to file a suit in the Ohio Supreme Court.  They insist that the machines are unconstitutional since they are a different gambling classification than the Ohio Lottery.  They actually are slot machines being classified as lottery games.  The group declared that the Governor didn’t have the right to pass this issue and that it should go to a vote of the people.

Gambling issues have been brought to a vote of the Ohio people in four elections and each were soundly defeated.  A poll, recently taken, shows some wavering on the issue by Ohioans.  The game Keno was instituted by the Lottery Commission not too long ago and the governor projected a profit of $73 million.  Unfortunately, during its first six months, Keno only brought in about $13 million and many organizations who purchased the rights to present the game to their customers, dropped it because it didn’t pan out.

Proponents of the issue say that Ohioans travel about 2 hours to get to other casinos in Michigan and West Virginia and spend their money to benefit those states.  They do not see a problem with those people playing VLT’s in their own state to pump up their own economy.  They also say that many of the Ohio race tracks don’t really have much room to put in these VLT’s and will have to build on to house them.  This would create construction jobs in the state.

News of the opposition didn’t come as any surprise to the Governor’s office.  Specific language was added to the budget to allow for this plan and the Governor’s office does not believe opponents have a leg to stand on.  Opponents, however, are mobilizing their 2.5 million some members to work against the plan.  In any case, it looks like Ohio’s budget will be tied up and VLT’s will be waiting to be installed for a little while.