Recordpub.com - Keno begins Monday in Ohio 13 Portage sites will offer game

By Marc Kovac
Record-Courier Capital Bureau
COLUMBUS " Last year, lawmakers put the kibosh on smoking, stripping and so-called skill-based gaming in bars and storefronts across Ohio.
They finalized rules implementing an issue approved by voters that banned smoking in most public places. They OK'd citizen-initiated legislation banning after-midnight activities at sexually oriented businesses. And they outlawed electronic games, like Tic Tac Fruit, that they deemed illegal gambling devices.
Bar and club owners, veterans groups and others were outspoken in their criticism of the moves, saying that the new laws and rules would take customers away from businesses, forcing many to close, leaving hundreds of Ohioans out of work and cutting millions from the state's tax revenue coffers.
Flash forward to Monday, when many of those same business owners will begin offering Ohio's latest foray into lottery gaming. Keno wagering starts at 6 a.m. that day, with the first drawing taking place around 11 a.m.
Gov. Ted Strickland first proposed the new game early in the year to deal with state budget issues. He said at the time, "I'm making a distinction that I think is a legitimate distinction between casino gambling or other kinds of gambling in Ohio. And the lottery, which is an activity that has been voted on by the people, has been supported by the people of this state for a long time, and this is an activity that is state-controlled (and) state-regulated and I think there is a vast difference between what we have proposed and what has been proposed by some entities in the recent past."
But some Republicans remain opposed to the move, including Sen. Ron Amstutz, a Republican from Wooster who introduced legislation that would have banned keno.
No action on that bill appears imminent, and Amstutz said it may be time for a citizen-driven initiative ending the lottery in Ohio altogether.
"I am starting to think that we may have to take down the whole lottery to make this thing work," he said. "You'd have to do it over time, because it has become something of a revenue dependency in an important sector " that would be schools. ... (But) it has absolutely been a detriment to the growth in school funding, because it hasn't been a source of growth."
The Impetus
In late January, shortly before his annual State of the State address, Strickland called a press conference to discuss looming budget issues and what his administration was doing to deal with them.
He said the state was facing a deficit of $733 million-$1.9 billion, and he outlined hundreds of millions in planned budget cuts at state agencies to keep spending in check.
Those cuts included closing psychiatric hospitals in Dayton and Cambridge, reducing staff, even turning town thermostats in some state office buildings.
At the Ohio Lottery Commission, administrators offered about $73 million in spending cuts for fiscal 2009. But the commission also planned to "achieve its budget target by enhancing lottery revenues through refreshing game products and adding games, such as keno and other monitor games, limited to age and time controlled settings, such as bars and other similar venues," according to documents.
That didn't sit right with some lawmakers, including the Republican leaders of the Ohio House and Senate. And opponents questioned whether it represented a reversal of the governor's stance and subsequent legislative action last year banning so-called skill-based amusement machines that awarded cash prizes.
But Senate President Bill Harris, a Republican from Ashland, and others also acknowledged that "the governor had the authority to implement (keno)." And the state Controlling Board finalized a contract with a Rhode Island company for the equipment and related costs to get the game up and running at about 2,000 retailers across the state.
The cost: about $27 million over two fiscal years.
How to Play
Keno involves patrons selecting numbers, which are drawn randomly every few minutes, with results displayed on electronic monitors. It operates much the same way as existing lottery games, only at a faster, more frequent pace.
Patrons pick 1 to 10 numbers out of a pool of 80. Twenty numbers are drawn at a time. Prizes are awarded based on the number of matching numbers and the wager amount (from $1 to $20). The higher the wager and numbers matched, the higher the price, with pay outs ranging from $1 to $100,000.
Technically, keno ticket sales will begin at 6 a.m. Monday, though the first drawing will not take place until 11:04 a.m. Since a majority of the outlets are bars, which typically don't open that early, "We don't expect people to be playing until around the first drawing," said Marie Kilbane, a spokeswoman for the Ohio Lottery Commission.
Afterward, drawings will take place every four minutes until 1:44 a.m. daily " 221 drawings per day, Kilbane said.
Customers must be at least 18 years old to play, and keno is offered only in age-controlled environments, like bars holding valid liquor licenses.
As of late last month, about 1,070 bars and taverns and others had submitted the requisite paperwork to become official keno outlets, Of that total, about 700 now have the equipment in place and will be ready to serve customers come Monday. The Lottery Commission anticipates having about 2,000 outlets by the end of the year, Kilbane said.
State officials expect about $292 million in keno sales annually, with about $73 million in profits that will go to public schools, Kilbane said. During the last fiscal year, about $672 million in lottery proceeds when into that school operations fund.
Still Opposed
A group of Republican lawmakers nearly succeeded in derailing keno.
In late April, in a surprise move during a floor debate, Rep. John Adams, a Republican from Sidney, successfully added language banning keno to an unrelated payday lending bill.
The amendment initially passed, on a vote of 49-46 and nearly went to a full floor vote before being removed.
Republican Speaker Jon Husted said afterward that the move provided a means for some members of his caucus to voice their opposition to keno and its potential effect on poorer Ohioans.
Adams and Amstutz earlier introduced companion bills in the House and Senate calling for the keno ban. They called the game the "crack cocaine of gambling" and "a tax on people with poor math skills."
The one sentence bills stated simply, "No rule shall authorize a lottery game that has more than two announcements of prize winners per day or is played on a slot machine as defined (by Ohio Revised Code)... including but not limited to a game of keno."
Neither bill moved through the legislative process before lawmakers left Columbus for their home districts in June, nd it appears unlikely that they will gain any traction before the end of the session.
But Amstutz hasn't given up in his fight against the expansion of gambling in Ohio. That could take shape as a citizens' initiative ending the Ohio Lottery outright over a set phase-out period.
"I just think it's the right thing to do," he said, adding of gambling, "It's very low-level, bottom feeding kind of economic activity. It sucks part of the lifeblood out of our own work force here, and we can't afford it."
He added, "It can be stopped legislatively, but it's not the only way it can be stopped."