Gambling news from http://www.timesreporter.com/
Interpreting Ohio’s gaming laws can be a roll of the dice.
State law specifically forbids the operation of casino-type games, such as poker tables or slot machines, but the definition of games of skill appears to be open for interpretation.
In Newcomerstown, officials are using their interpretation of what a game of skill is to block skill-based gaming establishments from entering their village.
Uhrichsville officials have been waiting for the state to hand down regulations or offer guidance on how the city should handle skill-based gaming businesses.
The city already has two gaming parlors – Lucky Stars on McCauley Dr. and Games of Skill on N. Water St. – but Mayor James “Bucky” Myers has hopes of limiting the establishment of additional parlors in the city.
“We need to get something on the books to at least regulate or control the number of these businesses,” Myers said Sunday during an interview. “We have two or three in the city now, depending on if you count the two machines in the barbershop, and we’ve had no problems with those businesses whatsoever.
“But we have three or four more people that want to start them up in Uhrichsville. I think they feel that the momentum has swung in their favor.”
Myers said he has advised potential owners to wait and see what the state has to say about the games and how the city’s games-of-skill ordinance will be drafted.
“The biggest element of our ordinance will be that these owners will have to show us certification from the state that their machines are in fact games of skill not chance,” he said.
During a Newcomerstown Village Council meeting Monday night, Solicitor Ryan Styer likened illegal gambling to games of skill, saying, “If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it’s a duck.”
In drafting a legal memorandum on behalf of the village, Styer drew from a May press release in which Attorney General Jim Petro called into question several gaming devices, including Tic-Tac-Fruit.
In his memo Styer said the Tuscarawas County prosecutor’s office has stated that Tic-Tac-Fruit is not a skill-based amusement devise.
His comments were called into question by gaming salesman Robert Hawk, a retiree of the FBI’s Cleveland Bureau, who said he would have nothing to do with anything illegal.
Hawk said his company, Pace-O-Matic of Georgia, already has reprogrammed Tic-Tac-Fruit machines to comply with Ohio law and since has won court cases in Summit and Meigs counties.
He said he is upset at the state’s lack of a stance on the games-of-skill issue.
“That’s the problem,” he said after Monday’s meeting. “We want the attorney general to take a stand on skill games one way or the other, but he hasn’t.”
At council’s June 19 meeting village resident Steven Farrow asked council for its blessing to open a gaming parlor. He didn’t get it.
Farrow, contacted later by phone, said he frequents gaming parlors in Tuscarawas and Uhrichsville to see what works and what doesn’t.
He also offered an explanation as to why some games are considered games of skill: “(It’s) because you push a button to stop the machine. But to be honest, to play them, there ain’t much skill to them.
“Even though you push a button, it is computerized and electronic. At times I’ve felt like the computer’s going to stop where it wants to stop.”
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