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Dayton
Daily News
Governor could decide fate of
Internet cafes soon
Thursday,
May 23, 2013
COLUMBUS
— A bill to effectively ban Internet cafe sweepstakes
parlors cleared the final hurdle Wednesday and is on its way to Gov.
John
Kasich’s desk.
The
Miami Valley is home to an estimated 100 of the parlors also
known as Internet cafes.
The
Ohio Senate approved House Bill 7 in a 27-6 vote, a mix of
Democrats and Republicans split on whether they consider the cafes an
extension
of gambling or employers of thousands of Ohioans. The House also split
when it
passed the bill in March in a 66-29 vote.
Internet
cafes sell phone or Internet time that can be used on
cafe computers to win prizes through slots-like games. The bill doesn’t
make the
cafes illegal, but restricts payouts to merchandise worth less than
$10. Cafe
owners said the limit would drastically discourage customers and put
them out
of business.
The
bill also authorizes the Bureau of Criminal Identification and
Investigation to investigate criminal activity involving any violation
of Ohio
gambling law. A Kasich spokesman said the governor will sign the bill
and a
second bill passed Wednesday that extends the current moratorium on new
cafes.
Sen.
Bill Seitz, R-Cincinnati, voted against the bill because he
said it will eliminate 6,000 to 8,000 jobs statewide and lawmakers
could have
found a way to regulate the industry.
Seitz
said the bill will not stop Internet cafes or another type
of gambling from surfacing in their place.
“When
you do not incentivize people to do the right thing, through
a system of carefully controlled and regulated operations, there will
be more
gray-area operations that will pop up very swiftly thereafter,” Seitz
said on
the floor.
Senators
who spoke in favor of the bill cited reports of corrupt
activity including money laundering at cafes and Ohio’s history of
letting the
voters decide whether to expand gambling
“Has
anyone ever authorized statewide gambling in Ohio and, moving
forward, is that the public policy we want for this state? I think the
answer
is no,” said Sen. Larry Obhof, R-Medina.
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the rest of the article at Dayton Daily
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