While Governor Strickland holds press conferences to lash out at the Senate and complain Bill Harris is working on a solution and seeking to pursuade the governor to sign on. See how that works, Gov. Strickland?
As Gov. Ted Strickland stepped up his bashing of Senate Republicans for what he called “blatant political gimmicks,” Senate President Bill Harris held hopes of swaying the Democratic governor into joining a GOP plan to put a slot machine proposal before voters.
“We will certainly be working on that approach,” Harris said Monday. His comments were the clearest sign since a state budget standoff began that Senate Republicans will counter Strickland’s “balanced budget framework” with a specific plan that includes a referendum on the racetrack slots idea.
There are certainly some details to be worked out, but the myth that the GOP was sitting around hoping Strickland would implode politically while the state burned has gone up in smoke:
For more than two weeks, Strickland and Harris have been at loggerheads over the operating budget for fiscal 2010 and 2011. Harris wants the racetrack slots issue on the ballot, and Strickland wants lawmakers to authorize it in the budget.
Strickland has said there isn’t time to put the slots issue before voters. But Republicans seized on language in a draft of the proposal that allows track owners to recoup license fees if voters approve a proposed November ballot issue allowing casinos in four Ohio cities.
Republicans say that so-called “clawback provision” makes any racetrack slots revenues contingent on the election anyway. They say that makes it a no-brainer to go to voters with a slots plan.
But Strickland said Monday that he doesn’t support the clawback. His spokeswoman said the draft language being circulated was House language, not necessarily what the governor favored.
So Strickland claims that the language circulating for his proposal – his “fowward-looking budget proposal” – included language he didn’t support? His fellow Democrats in the House drafted language that was contrary to his proposal? Ahh, leadership …
Now, I am against increased gambling in the state, but giving the voters a choice between further cuts and a slots proposal seems like a fair compromise. And it has the added benefit of not going against the wishes of the voters which has been Senator Harris’s position from the start; and was Governor Strickland’s until a few weeks ago.
I wish Harris and the GOP Senate had the guts to offer a budget without slots but politics is the art of the possible so I will take a compromise that doesn’t involve higher taxes and gives the voters the final say.
