Oregon officials consider video slots

Thursday, Sept. 4, 2003 | 11:10 a.m.

SUN STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS

SALEM, Ore. -- The Oregon Legislature's budget for the next two years includes an extra $67 million in revenue from the Oregon Lottery, one of the state's biggest money makers.

But lawmakers who adjourned last week gave the Lottery little direction on how to raise the money.

One strong possibility is that the Lottery commission will allow video slot machines, a move that indirectly requires approval from the Legislature or Gov. Ted Kulongoski.

With thousands of problem gamblers in Oregon, however, no one is in a hurry to take credit for advancing the state's dependence on the Lottery.

Oregon depends on profits from lottery games to pay large chunks of such state services as public schools. In the fiscal year ending June 30, the Lottery sent $387 million to state coffers, mostly from video poker, said spokesman Lou Torres.

Mary Ellen Glynn, a spokeswoman for Kulongoski, said the governor hasn't decided whether he'll approve the video slots.

Video slots would involve a variety of traditional slot games as opposed to video poker devices, which just offer poker games. The Oregon Lottery operates poker games in bars, taverns and other places that have age restriction policies in place, Torres said.

If video slots are approved, the lottery may either add the machines in poker locations or remove some of the poker devices to make way for the slots, he said.

Jeff Marotta, manager of the Problem Gambling Services branch of Oregon's Department of Human Services, says the video slots would add to the 75,000 Oregonians -- or about 2 percent of the state's residents -- who have a gambling problem.

During the last weeks of the session, Kulongoski pressed lawmakers to pass a law defining how the extra $67 million would be raised, but they didn't.

Lawmakers did pass one law to allow bar and tavern owners to put in a sixth video poker machine, up from the current ceiling of five. The law also allows race tracks to go from five to 10 of the machines.