BuckeyeBlog

Regardless of what you think about expanded gambling, transparency is the key to figuring out how slots became the answer to all Ohio’s budget woes.  Kudos to the Akron Beacon Journal (ABJ) for an excellent article detailing some of the links that may help explain.

Here’s an excerpt:  “The winners? Those seven horse racetracks where the 17,500 electronic slots will be located. Just a coincidence that Mountaineer Gaming, the owner of Scioto Downs in Columbus, includes among its lobbyists Kimberly Redfern, the wife of Chris Redfern, the state Democratic Party chairman? Or that Alan Melamed, a close friend and adviser of Speaker Armond Budish, represents the Ohio Legacy Fund, a consortium of Ohio racetracks?”

This is not an issue of party – this sort of behavior is one of the few issues that is truly bipartisan.  But are these close relationships and the end result a coincidence?

This entry was posted on Monday, July 13th, 2009 at 11:32 am and is filed under Observations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.