According to a report issued Thursday by the Columbus Chamber, the Columbus Blue Jackets could leave central Ohio if the team can't turn around its economic prospects. Currently, the Blue Jackets are operating under an economic model that is causing losses of $12 million per year. A deal to keep the hockey team in Columbus and the area around the arena afloat will likely include asking for public dollars, and is likely to happen soon.

The team and the district around the arena generated $30 million in taxes last year. A loss of that magnitude would be devastating to the city.

Ty D. Marsh, chamber president and CEO says explains that there is a sense of urgency, and that they are "looking for a solution or progress by the end of the year." Already into November, that gives the team less than two months to come up with some kind of workable solution.

Marsh says that the goal would be a financial package that would help the team be rid of some significant costs. Included in that could be $4 million in operational losses and $5 million in arena rent per year.

The following lines on every high school playoff game in Ohio this weekend are for information and conversational purposes only. Any other use of this information is strictly prohibited.

Favorites on the left. The number in the middle. The over and under for selected games on the right. Enjoy the information. Next week Bernie will release his odds to win championships.

Cleveland Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert celebrated two victories today. One was the win by his team the other was a lot greater. Gilbert will now be the owner of two casinos in the Buckeye State, one of them right here in the City of Cleveland.

Gilbert and Mayor Frank Jackson shared the stage today at the victory party of Issue 3. Gilbert told the assembled supporters on the fourth floor of Quicken Loans Arena:

"We're going to deliver something very special."

Jackson, who won a huge re-election victory tonight, told the crowd:

"This is not a panacea, but it's a significant tool for the city of Cleveland. It's one more tool we can use to further the goals and vision of Cleveland."

Here is the audio of the full statements by both the owner of the Cavaliers and the Mayor of Cleveland:

Ohioans will have 4 cities to choose from in the near future if they feel like going to a casino. Buckeye State voters have ended a 20 year string of losses to expand gambling in the state in a hard fought battle. Proponents say that by passing Issue 3 more than 34,000 jobs will be created in Ohio. Issue 3 has gained 53% of the vote to 47% with about 90% vote counted.

The passage of the gambling issue was a long time coming for people who wanted to see casinos in the state for two decades. Each time that a ballot measure would be brought to the electorate, it would fail miserably. What changed? The latest casino plan puts 4 gambling locations in the biggest cities which likely gained support in those urban areas. Another factor is that the economy is so poor in the Buckeye State that many felt that we needed this catalyst to get us out of the doldrums that we have been in. Lastly, each state we border currently has expanded gambling and people were fed up with those dollars leaving the state.

2 statewide ballot issues in Ohio are decided. Both Issue 1 and Issue 2 are headed for passage by the Buckeye State electorate. The big issue on the ballot of course was Issue 3 which would bring casinos to Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinatti, and Toledo. That issue is too close to call at this time but is ahead by 6% with 73% of the vote in.

With Issue 1 passing, the constitutional amendment will allow the state to borrow about $200 million that would be repaid over 15 years in order to pay one-time bonuses to veterans who served in the Middle East in our wars in Iraq and Afganastan.

Issue 2 will Issue set up a Ohio Livestock Care Standards Board. The board would have far-reaching powers to set standards for livestock and poultry care, food safety, supply and availability, disease prevention, farm management, and animal well-being.

A former Michigan state trooper tells a different story of Dan Gilbert’s arrest on operation of gambling business than the Cavs owner has been peddling to the news media. Gilbert has made it seem a minor episode, best forgotten.

Gilbert, a billionaire of the mortgage business and owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers, has been a lead proponent of a monopoly casino issue on the November ballot. Issue 3 will give Gilbert a monopoly casino in Cleveland.

A lieutenant detective tells of the arrest of Gilbert when he was a Michigan student. He posed as the father of a gambling debtor. He said a victim told him of a strong-armed threat unless he paid. He also linked a car filled with manure to the betting business as a method of forcing collections of gambling debts.

The detective, John Fiedler recorded the meeting with Gilbert when he went to pay the debt. He said he was shown a ledger with betting data with pages of bets made, some as high as $1,000 or more.

Here is his statement in full:

My name is John Fiedler, and I was a member of the Michigan Department of State Police for 25 years.

“Today, Atlantic City, in the eyes of one gambling executive, Tim Wilmott, is in a ‘death spiral,’” that’s the tone of a Sunday New York Times piece on the financial troubles of the city’s casinos.

“Rows of slot machines stand eerily empty,” says the story while hotel rooms are empty. Many casinos have experienced double digit revenue drops, the report said.

The article is far from a hatchet job. However, it does have a cautionary message to Cleveland and other Ohio cities where casinos would go if Issue 3 is passed.

Cleveland will be rolling the dice next Tuesday when voters go into the booths to cast a vote that would give a billionaire a monopoly board contract for a Cleveland casino.

“The economic slowdown has shown that the gambling industry is not quite as recession-proof as was so long believed,” it said of Atlantic City.

And you might like to remember as you go into that booth the promise of Atlantic City’s gambling sales people:

“Billed as a ‘great experiment’ in urban redevelopment, legalized gambling was pitched to voters as an effort to reverse Atlantic City’s long decline…”

Sound familiar?

The office of Governor Ted Strickland announced today that that Ohio energy research projects have received more than $17.3 in stimulus money. One of the recipients was right here in Cuyahoga County as Momentive Performance Materials of Strongsville was awarded $4.5 Million. Here is the full release from the Governors office:

Ohio Governor Ted Strickland today congratulated four Ohio projects that received more than $17.3 million in funding from the U.S. Department of Energy for advanced energy research. These projects were among $151 million in federal funding awarded to 37 major research projects nationwide from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

“We are grateful to Secretary Chu and the U.S. Department of Energy for providing these funds, which will allow us to enhance our state’s advanced energy capacity, and to the Ohio congressional delegation for supporting the Recovery Act and Ohio’s applications,” Strickland said. “Being among awardees such as MIT and Stanford University is a testament to Ohio’s competitive position in the advanced energy field.”

The general election is fast approaching and everyone seems to have an opinion on Issue 3 which would bring in casinos to the Buckeye State if it were to pass next Tuesday. The Downtown Cleveland Alliance came in with a late endorsement today writing in a press release:

Downtown Cleveland: The Downtown Cleveland Alliance (DCA) formally announced its support for State Issue 3 today. The Alliance joins the Greater Cleveland Partnership in its backing of the constitutional amendment that would legalize casino gambling in Cleveland, Toledo, Cincinnati and Columbus.

“Our number one mission is the continual progress of Downtown into a thriving, urban core for our entire region,” says John Carney, Chairman of the Downtown Cleveland Alliance Board. “Issue 3 has the potential to be a major benefit to our local economy, if it is done right. We feel strongly that Dan Gilbert’s downtown proposal will ensure the maximum benefit to Downtown and the surrounding region by building on the investments the private and public sectors have already made.”

Former Congressman Dennis Eckart has joined the party. He’s backing Issue 3. That makes it almost unanimous – every shyster in town is backing a monopoly casino for a billionaire.

What a wonderful town this is.

Eckart, a former Greater Cleveland Growth Association (now Greater Cleveland Partnership) top boss, played a liberal politician for years. It’s has been a money-maker as Eckart has become a corporate shill here.

WKYC-TV allows this lobbyist free air access many Sunday mornings on Tom Beres’s Between the Lines. A lobbyist as a political commentator. Do you go any lower?

WKYC reports that Eckart will fill-in for billionaire mortgage man and Cavalier owner Dan Gilbert He is supposedly ill. Gilbert will be one of the owners of a monopoly casino, if voters approve Issue 3, a constitutional change on Election Day.

Eckart will argue for Gilbert’s casino deal in a debate at Kent State University. He is a trustee at KSU.

Once a Golden Boy liberal politician, Eckart has bounced around after leaving Congress. He has been with law firms Baker & Hostetler and the now bankrupt Arter & Hadden. He served in Congress from 1981 to 1993, leaving to pursue business interests as the Republicans took ownership of the U. S. Congress.