DPSA has been spending countless hours following Ohio House Bill 386, known as the casino bill or gaming bill. This piece of legislation encompasses regulations for Ohio’s four new casinos, Ohio’s seven racetracks, VLTs, the state lottery, bingo, internet gaming, and charitable gaming, just to name a few! This bill has been a hot topic for the past few months now, and is slowly drawing to an end.
After the gaming legislation passed the Ohio House of Representatives on February 15, 2012, it made its way to the Ohio Senate. After many amendments to the House version of the bill, the Senate finally passed out their version on May 9, 2012. The Ohio House did not concur on the changes made to HB 386, and the legislation was sent to conference committee, where further changes and negotiations will be made by both Ohio House and Senate lawmakers.
This is a very exciting time for Ohio. The first casino opened this past week in Cleveland, and the Toledo casino is scheduled to open later this month. Not only are these casinos going to be big attractions and sources of entertainment, but they are also going to create thousands of jobs and an influx of revenue for the State and local governments—estimated revenue of approximately $100 million. It will be interesting to see how the money is spent once the revenue dollars start rolling in. Hopefully these gaming dollars will help prevent Ohio from ever encountering the very large budget deficit that it faced last year, ever again!