Governor Ted Strickland approves gambling revenue years after serious opposition because he has considered using it to balance the state budget.
Notably, being a Democrat he has been through several phases of hard knocks before. Hard knocks has eventually had him decide in favor of gambling. Perhaps, gambling was one of the best of the other kinds of painful choices he had before him to work out on helping the state budget.
“This has been a difficult choice for me but I believe a necessary one” stated Governor Ted Strickland.
He made this decision after having made an extensive study in this regard. He has worked out on the revenues that can be chipped in and eventually found out that the gambling industry can support creating net revenues of $765 million to the state. Notably, the total budget of the state is $54 billion. He also added that this was lot different and contradicting than what he thought it was.
The current endorsement of working out with establishing slots was not done with a majority vote system, but it was accomplished via legislative approach.
Though he has agreed on a bit of gambling revenues to the state, he is not in total compliance with an amendment in law that is vouched on for establishing casinos in Cleveland, Toledo, Cincinnati, and Columbus.
Conservative Ohio Roundtable gambling opponents were quick to remark on the one-sided favorability of Strickland’s approval on the racetracks of the state.
Since the decision was made much without voter majority of any kind, the Roundtable has required the Ohio Legislature to do something about protecting the goodness of the vast voting majority of Ohioans who are actually opposed to expansion of slot machines in Ohio. The cuts as estimated in the budget by the governor will be coming to $2.4 billion.
