EVERYONE WANTS in on the potentially new legal cash cow of sports betting in Ohio, even the little children.
Well, the little children don’t know about it yet, but some people are hoping to target revenues from the as-yet-unlegalized sports gambling to pre-kindergarten education.
Did you hear that, Mayor Wade Kapszukiewicz?
As a candidate, Toledo’s mayor set an aspirational goal to make preschool available for all children in Toledo.
It’s aspirational and not a promise because Mr. Kapszukiewicz made it clear that he would not pay for it with city tax revenues, so the money would have to come from some outside source over which he has no control.
So far, there’s not a definite source of money for pre-K (although there is a very promising campaign under way led by wealthy businessman Pete Kadens to raise a foundation of $60 million that would pay for pre-K schooling and scholarships to Toledo public high school graduates).
However, the arrival of sports betting in Ohio as a legal activity may turn up some dollars for early education.
Gov. Mike DeWine has made children a top priority of his administration, so much so that Democrats are starting to think they won the election for governor after all.
In his State of the State speech Tuesday the governor said that “by increasing our investment in quality, early childhood education, we will improve these children’s odds for success.”
Toledo Rep. Paula Hicks-Hudson, who escorted the governor into the House chamber, said afterwards on Facebook, “He sounded like a Democrat.”
Speaker of the House Larry Householder, who hails from Appalachia, is also a big supporter of education.
On the other hand, the Ohio General Assembly is still an overwhelmingly Republican and conservative body.
This was demonstrated when Governor DeWine’s State of the State address calling for an 18-cent increase in the gas tax was responded to by the House voting Thursday for a 10.7-cent increase instead.
And this is the body where the Democrats are supposed to have some pull.
So the reality is that the creation of a fund just to send children — especially in low-income school districts — to preschool is far from guaranteed.
A bill to allow sports betting was introduced in the state Senate last year. Former state Sen. Randy Gardner (R., Bowling Green) was one of three co-sponsors. He’s now the chancellor for higher education in Ohio and former state Rep. Theresa Gavarone (R., Bowling Green) now has his seat.
The bill has only one sentence: “It is the intent of the General Assembly to develop and enact legislation legalizing sports wagering.”
They didn’t even pass that bill so we can’t say that the General Assembly even has the intent to go down this path.
But the lobbyists are working overtime to get sports wagering approved, now that West Virginia and Pennsylvania have already moved in that direction. An opinion from the U.S. Justice Department says sports gaming must take place in a closed system — i.e., not the Internet. And it basically set a 90-day window ending in April to get it done.
Those restrictions favor assigning the business to the Ohio Lottery Commission, which already has a closed system with the infrastructure in place all over Ohio to take sports bets.
Lobbyists for the four Ohio casinos and the race tracks have submitted proposed bills.
Now the Ohio Lottery Commission is in the act.
Gambling law in Ohio is tightly controlled, even if the activity itself is not.
The constitutional amendment that was passed in 2009 establishing the four casinos — including Toledo’s Hollywood Casino — allows them to offer table games and slot machines. How sports betting fits into that paradigm is not clear.
The Ohio Lottery is making a bid for this business on the grounds that it has 8,900 lottery outlets in the state.
The biggest selling point of the lottery commission is that the business would be owned by the state and all the net revenues — not just the taxes — would come to the state.
Some estimate the potential for about $200 million a year in spending on sports betting, with revenue to the state of at least $30 million a year — or as much as $120 million in other estimates.
That’s a start that would make the word aspirational unnecessary.
Tom Troy is associate editor of The Blade and member of the Blade Editorial Board.
First Published March 8, 2019, 12:00 p.m.
