Speaking Monday to the Butler County Democratic Party, Gov. Ted Strickland told a group of staunch supporters that Ohio still faces looming challenges including the "loss of manufacturing jobs, too many people without health care, jobs that don’t pay living wages and the high cost of college."
But Strickland can reduce by one the scary, threatening boogie men dragging the state down because Ohioans will soon no longer be able to play faux slot machines. The threat was so onerous that he, Attorney General Marc Dann and nearly the entire Ohio legislature raced to attack it as if the future of Ohio depended on their pell-mell redefinition of what constitutes a "game of skill."
LITTLE WORK AND NO PLAY MAKES OHIO A DULL STATE
Even though gambling is lawful in all of Ohio’s neighboring states, Buckeyes can now sleep soundly knowing that the diabolical disasters that come from playing poorly paying games with childish names like Tic Tac Fruit and The Nudgemaster won’t be a problem any more. The bill eliminates games that offer cash payment and caps at $10 the wholesale value of other prizes.
In a vote of 86-10, the Ohio House agreed to Senate amendments to a bill with a built-in emergency clause that will sound the death knell for so-called skill-based video machines, but not before the herd caved into special interest groups who wanted exemptions for tournaments involving darts, billiards and bowling.
Strickland, whose executive order this summer banning the games met with a series of unfriendly court decisions that favored game manufacturers, is expected to sign the bill as soon as it hits his desk, which could be this week.
OHIO-STYLE DEMOCRACY: NO PUBLIC TESTIMONY
With the speed of anti-terrorism hero Jack Bauer rushing to stop a nuclear bomb from blowing up, Strickland, Dann and Ohio’s Republican-led legislature teamed up and steamrolled Ohio to becoming a decidedly quieter and duller state. The troika of power centers fixed a loophole in state law that did no clearly distinguish a game of skill from a game of chance, an opening video game manufacturers exploited until yesterday.
Even the normally conservative, Republican-leaning News-Herald mocked legislators told Ohio lawmakers to slow down to make a good decision. Legislators created the gap in 1984 when they failed to provide a clear definition between various electronic games. The paper cautioned the thundering herd that when they run too fast, as is their wont from time to time, "they can embarrass themselves by their good intentions."
In their editorial, the northeastern Ohio newspaper rightfully chided state legislators for passing a bill without according citizens and other interested parties a chance to testify on it. When the herd of 132 gets a full head of steam, as they did over this tempest-in-a-tea-pot issue, democracy is as long-lived as the sound of a gavel.
Enforcement of the new law will fall to Dann who has told local law enforcement agencies that he will do what he can – provide investigators, surveillance equipment, lawyers and expert witnesses – to help them bring the violators of the new law to justice.
OHIO SAFE FROM GAMBLING GRANDMAS
But as we learn from Statehouse reporter Bill Cohen’s snippet on the bill, maybe all Ohio has done is to save itself from Ohioans, many of them senior citizens, innocently amusing themselves for hours on end at prices they can afford.
Cohen spoke with Ohio arcade owner John Masari, who was incredulous at what the state’s elected representatives had just done, and asked America to wake up. Masari said "there’s no emergency...the 60-year old lady playing the Nudgmaster is not an emergency." He promised a new lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the law. Vowing to find another way around the law, one Circleville parlor -game owner told those responsible for the bill, "they haven’t heard the last of me."
With Ohio’s new anti-stripper law in full force and now this bill, which could make criminals out of grandma and grandpa, Ohio’s law enforcement forces will have to choose between stopping gang violence, rapes, domestic violence, robbery and traffic violations or sitting in adult entertainment venues waiting for a dancer to inappropriately touch a customer or cruise a bar or video store hoping to catch someone playing a slot-lite game.