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By SHELLEY HANSON With AP Dispatches

ST. CLAIRSVILLE — Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland probably won’t receive a Christmas card from Jason Smith this year.

Smith said he won’t have much of a Christmas at all because of a bill signed Thursday by Strickland banning skilled gambling machines that offer cash payouts or prizes as payouts worth more than $10.

Smith owns Skilled Games #2 in St. Clairsville. On Thursday evening, Smith said his lawyer advised him to close up shop that night, as the law went into effect as soon as Strickland signed the bill. A resident of Adena, Smith owns another parlor in Jewett, which was his first.

“This is my only income. This is my only business,” Smith said. “I still owe money on these machines.”

Between his Jewett and St. Clairsville parlors, Smith said he has 59 machines and eight employees, which he laid off after receiving word from his attorney about the bill’s signing. He estimated his debt at $30,000 and noted he would try to sell his machines on eBay.

“They could have given us three or four months to save up and pay things off. Then I’d be all right — at least until the end of the holidays. I have a little boy. It’s going to be hard now,” Smith said. “The government could have taxed me or required me to have a permit just to stay in business.”

One of Smith’s patrons, Delores Bazar of St. Clairsville, said she never thought of Skilled Games #2 as a gambling parlor. It was simply a nice place to meet friends, have fun and eat home-cooked food. It was a good alternative to a bar.

“People think of them as dens of iniquity, but it’s not that at all. It’s not just a gambling place,” Bazar said. “There was no pressure to play games — you could sit out there and eat.”

She noted she planned on keeping in touch with everyone she met at Skilled Games #2.

Employee Cindy Dornon said she was going to remember Strickland’s decision come re-election time.

“I think it’s awful. It was not just a place where people gambled, it was a social place. I knew everything about everyone that came in here. Professionals came here, teachers and nurses, and now I’m out of a job,” Dornon said as tears welled from her eyes. “I’d come in here on my days off just to talk to people. ... We were one big, happy family.”

Brenda McMahon, also an employee, said Ohio’s elected leaders have plenty of other issues to resolve, but instead they are creating more unemployed residents.

“We didn’t have drug dealers or prostitutes. ... We had decent, friendly people,” McMahon said.

Dornon said she was devastated.

“At election time, we speak,” Dornon noted.

According to the Associated Press, the slot-like gambling machines spread across the state because of a legal loophole.

Strickland’s law strengthened the definition of the “skill-based” machines, even those at Chuck E. Cheese. The bill contained an emergency clause that made the law effective as soon as the governor signed it Thursday. The measure passed swiftly in both the Senate and House in recent weeks over objections that lawmakers rushed it through without any chance for public comment.

Games based on chance are illegal in Ohio. The new law is intended to shut down machines like Tic Tac Fruit that depend on chance but require a certain level of skill. Lawmakers said the update was needed because the machines took advantage of a law that banned machines based largely or wholly on chance. The new law will not apply to darts, billiards and bowling, but lawmakers disagreed over what kind of impact overall the law would have on the gambling industry.

 

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