Ohio Journal; No. 511; The Ohio Lottery; Foreign Ownership of Ohio Farmland; The Ohio Lottery; Foreign Ownership of Ohio Farmland

<v Speaker>This week, Ohio Journal takes a look at the Ohio lottery and reports on a proposal <v Speaker>that would prohibit citizens or corporations of foreign countries from buying Ohio <v Speaker>farm land. Bill Cohen and Peggy Garvie report. <v Bill Cohen>In 1973, Ohio voters went to the polls and in effect told state <v Bill Cohen>lawmakers, we give you the authority to set up a state lottery. <v Bill Cohen>Sixty four percent of the voters okayed the idea and the legislators liked it, too. <v Bill Cohen>That same year, the House voted 60 to 33 to create the lottery and <v Bill Cohen>the Senate agreed 30 to one. <v Bill Cohen>Now, though, it's six years later and some of the enthusiasm has worn off. <v Bill Cohen>It is true that thousands of people have bought a 50 cent ticket and taken home one <v Bill Cohen>hundred five thousand or even a million dollars in winnings. <v Bill Cohen>But others are learning that despite what the TV commercials say, all that glitters <v Bill Cohen>is not gold.

<v Speaker>Hey, you want to have some fun, play the number, if your hunch is right, you <v Speaker>win tonight. <v Speaker>The number, Ohio Lottery's new daily number game. <v Bill Cohen>During its brief lifetime. The lottery has been the frequent target of charges of <v Bill Cohen>mismanagement. It's had eight different directors. <v Bill Cohen>And it seems someone is always proposing the lottery headquarters be moved from Cleveland <v Bill Cohen>to Columbus. So state officials can keep a closer eye on it. <v Bill Cohen>Original backers of the lottery sold the idea by saying it could mean 100 <v Bill Cohen>million dollars more a year in the state treasury, something that could help ease Ohio's <v Bill Cohen>school funding problems. <v Bill Cohen>But the money has never materialized. <v Bill Cohen>The most the lottery has ever brought in was in fiscal 1977, when profits <v Bill Cohen>totaled fifty nine million dollars. <v Bill Cohen>Since then, they dwindled to 40 million in 78. <v Bill Cohen>Only 20 million dollars last year. <v Bill Cohen>The low profits are one reason for state. <v Bill Cohen>Representatives are now proposing the lottery end in mid 1981, <v Bill Cohen>unless the legislature find some positive reasons to keep it going.

<v Rep. Paul Leonard>I voted for the lottery based on the premise that I thought it would add money to the <v Rep. Paul Leonard>state treasury and assist in the school funding crisis. <v Rep. Paul Leonard>And I believe that it did do that for a limited number of years. <v Rep. Paul Leonard>Now, I think that it has outlived its usefulness and if it can't justify <v Rep. Paul Leonard>itself, I feel that it should come to a natural end. <v Bill Cohen>The lottery's newest director, Ed Taylor, still doesn't agree his agency should <v Bill Cohen>die. He's predicting rising profits with a new numbers game. <v Bill Cohen>And he says last year's low profit is explainable. <v Bill Cohen>There just weren't any new games to get people excited. <v Ed Taylor>Any type of games that we were operating with last year were ticket type games or weekly <v Ed Taylor>games and instant games. These were games that were on the market too long, but <v Ed Taylor>people had become disenchanted with them. <v Ed Taylor>We likewise did not have sufficient revenue. <v Ed Taylor>When sales go down, our revenues for advertising is based on a <v Ed Taylor>one point five sales. We didn't have sufficient revenue to put on a good

<v Ed Taylor>advertising campaign. So it was a we were in a catch 22 situation. <v Ed Taylor>We couldn't get respond with a different type of new game and we couldn't advertise. <v Bill Cohen>So now with the new number game, you predict that profits are going to go up from 20. <v Ed Taylor>Yes, yes, definitely. <v Bill Cohen>Once you get everything going well, instead of 20 million dollar profits a year, <v Bill Cohen>you have any idea? [Ed Taylor: Well it should go] to 40 or 50. <v Ed Taylor>Yes, it should go 40 to 50 million dollars a year, easily, conservatively. <v Ed Taylor>We expect it. I'd be disappointed. It isn't over that. <v Speaker>Come on, You wanna make a bet. <v Speaker>?inaudible?. <v Bill Cohen>But the lottery isn't on the defensive just because of dwindling profits. <v Bill Cohen>Critics are also renewing a charge that was made years ago, and that is <v Bill Cohen>that working class and low income Ohioans are playing the lottery as much <v Bill Cohen>or more than upper income people who can afford to lose money in a long shot. <v Rep. Paul Leonard>I think that has been verified more and more as the years have gone by.

<v Rep. Paul Leonard>When the lottery began, many people bought tickets to see if they would be <v Rep. Paul Leonard>a winner. I think I bought a ticket the first two weeks of the lottery and have not <v Rep. Paul Leonard>purchased a ticket since that time, basically because I was not a winner. <v Rep. Paul Leonard>But it seems the studies are showing that those who reside in core cities, for example, <v Rep. Paul Leonard>the people who can least afford lottery tickets, are still playing the game, <v Rep. Paul Leonard>more so than those who live in suburbs or rural areas. <v Bill Cohen>A look at the Columbus area backs up Leonard's point. <v Bill Cohen>There are 37 places in Franklin County where you can buy tickets for the new number game <v Bill Cohen>in rich suburbs. Upper Arlington, Dublin, Worthington. <v Bill Cohen>You don't find any outlets, but you find a lot in the inner city. <v Bill Cohen>The near north and east sides of town where many of the poor live is where most <v Bill Cohen>the new lottery outlets are. <v Bill Cohen>At one, toonies drive through. <v Bill Cohen>The owner isn't very happy about that. <v Wilford Tuney>Went out when they first come to me and talk to me about having a lottery game. <v Wilford Tuney>They claim that was only gonna be a very few machines, maybe two to three at most on

<v Wilford Tuney>Mount Vernon. Now there's seven on Mount Vernon and, oh, maybe four blocks away, there's <v Wilford Tuney>four or five more. And it makes it hard for all the merchants out east <v Wilford Tuney>to make any money off the lottery game because we have so many machines and so many place <v Wilford Tuney>for people to go. And it really has hurt our sales. <v Speaker>Why do you think there are so many lottery places here on the Near East side? <v Speaker>Well, I think mainly because most black people play a lot of numbers to try to take a <v Speaker>chance to better their conditions. <v Speaker>And in the other neighborhoods where they don't need to do that. <v Speaker>And I think that's the real problem. The reason they have set up so many machines out <v Speaker>east here and it really taken a lot of money out of our community because people <v Speaker>were able to go to maybe fifteen or twenty places and play these numbers. <v Speaker>One of toonies, regular lottery customers, is Johnny Ellis. <v Speaker>Everyday they play. I'm I'm right there. <v Speaker>How much would you say you spend every week on this? <v Speaker>I spend about twenty dollars a week. <v Speaker>And have you need money or have you lost money? <v Speaker>I have made it. But I don't want to lose too much either.

<v Speaker>I'm will get it back. You're gonna get it back. <v Speaker>Yeah. Just keep on playing. Cee, you play. <v Speaker>You got a chance. See where you don't have I don't play you. <v Speaker>You have no chance. So you've got to keep on playing. <v Speaker>I hit a million dollar, you know. <v Speaker>I need to do. Yeah. <v Speaker>You need the money. Oh, I need the money. Yeah. <v Speaker>Yeah, I need the money back. <v Speaker>The fact that many Ohioans who don't have a lot of money still play the lottery concerns <v Speaker>lottery director Taylor. But he says if the state wasn't in the lottery business, <v Speaker>Ohioans would still lose money gambling the rich at the horse races and an <v Speaker>illegal football pools and the poor in the illegal numbers game out on the streets. <v Speaker>The number game is going to be was played <v Speaker>and is being played by those people who, if they didn't have this legitimate state <v Speaker>agency to bet with, would bet with the illegal operation whether and they would <v Speaker>continue to bet with the illegal operation if the state

<v Speaker>were not providing this service for them. <v Speaker>So you're saying these people are going to play the lottery one way or the other? <v Speaker>They'll play the lottery. They'll play this game. <v Speaker>Put it that way. They only play it with the state or they'll play with the illegal. <v Speaker>That's the point. So low income people are going to be losing their money either way. <v Speaker>Either way. <v Speaker>What does Governor Rhoades have to say about the lottery? <v Speaker>Well, not much. He's pushing for administrative changes, more power for the director, <v Speaker>less for the five member lottery commission. <v Speaker>But when it comes to questions about ending the lottery, the governor is ducking it. <v Speaker>I didn't invent the lottery. <v Speaker>I'm just I inherited it. And I'm trying to administer the law and learn <v Speaker>to love honor. <v Speaker>I'm going to minister not to have a moderate. <v Speaker>The ownership of land has always had a somewhat sacred or about it. <v Speaker>Last year, driven by fears of land grabs by oil rich Arabs

<v Speaker>and an honest desire to measure the scope of the situation, the Ohio legislature <v Speaker>passed a law that requires foreign land owners to register with the state <v Speaker>if their property is more than three acres in size or one hundred thousand dollars <v Speaker>in market value. The data isn't in yet, but already there is a <v Speaker>move in the House to ban foreign ownership of farmland altogether. <v Speaker>America is the world's breadbasket. <v Speaker>The Arabs have oil and we have food. <v Speaker>There are only seven major exporters of food in the world, and the United States exports <v Speaker>twice as much as the other six combined. <v Speaker>We control food like the Arabs control oil. <v Speaker>It is argued that the politics of food could become a critical international issue in the <v Speaker>future and then encouraged by the declining dollar. <v Speaker>Foreign investors could gobble up vast acres of prime American farmland <v Speaker>and eventually take control of the nation's food supply. <v Speaker>But until recently, the system has been incapable of even estimating the extent of the

<v Speaker>problem, much less dealing with it. <v Speaker>That acute lack of information has left plenty of room for rhetoric. <v Speaker>Now a few facts about the situation. <v Speaker>Approximately fifty four out of every thousand acres of American farm land offered <v Speaker>for sale last year was bought up by foreign investors. <v Speaker>Only three percent of America's farms change hands each year, and farmer <v Speaker>to farmer sales account for 80 percent of all transactions. <v Speaker>September seventy nine survey of Ohio by the U.S. <v Speaker>Agriculture Department showed that foreigners own a mere eight thousand one <v Speaker>hundred forty nine acres of the nearly 17 million acres of farmland <v Speaker>here. Nationwide, estimates show that 67 percent <v Speaker>of direct foreign investment is of European, not Middle Eastern origin. <v Speaker>The Dutch, the British, the Canadians and the Germans top the list. <v Speaker>American farmland is an incredible bargain on the world market, averaging

<v Speaker>about 1000 dollars an acre, while in Europe, farmland sells for four <v Speaker>thousand dollars an acre. <v Speaker>Congressional investigations estimate that American investment abroad outstrips <v Speaker>whatever foreigners may spend in this country. <v Speaker>Five to one. Secretary of State Tony Celebrezze says <v Speaker>it'll be March of next year before he knows the total amount of Ohio land <v Speaker>owned by foreign interests and the total value of real estate <v Speaker>that's been registered has been about fifty four million dollars and represents about <v Speaker>10000 acres of Ohio land. <v Speaker>Is this more than you thought it would be? Or less? <v Speaker>So far, the registrations have been at a lower level than we anticipated, <v Speaker>although any purchase that was made prior to last March 19th. <v Speaker>The purchaser has a year to register. <v Speaker>So we really don't have a a total and complete picture at this point <v Speaker>of what the registrations will ultimately be like. <v Speaker>But Representative Gene Brand, still a farmer from Utica, says he doesn't

<v Speaker>think it's too early to make the decision to outlaw foreign ownership of farms. <v Speaker>He explains why he introduced the bill. <v Speaker>Well, in my district to one of the largest farms in Licking County was sold <v Speaker>to a nonresident alien foreign investor. <v Speaker>And many people in my district raised the concern as to the <v Speaker>ripple effect. You know, an increase in foreign investment would have, for instance, <v Speaker>land rents increased in that community. <v Speaker>The cost of land increased. <v Speaker>And I reflected the concern to people in that area had, as <v Speaker>well as my own personal views on the the disadvantages and <v Speaker>the foreign investment in our agricultural land has. <v Speaker>Despite opposition from the Ohio Realtors Association, Brand Stool's <v Speaker>bill was passed by the House Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee and should <v Speaker>come up for a vote in the full House by late January.

<v Speaker>Meanwhile, it has stirred up debate between the state's two largest farm organizations, <v Speaker>the Farm Bureau and the Farmers Union. <v Speaker>The Farm Bureau, a prime mover for ?seller Breezy's? <v Speaker>Land registration bill, is reserving judgment until all the data is <v Speaker>in. <v Dean Simeral>It's difficult to suggest that there's a problem with foreign ownership of Farm First <v Dean Simeral>when membership is a very infinitesimal part of the total land holdings <v Dean Simeral>somewhere in the neighborhood of a half percent estimate. <v Dean Simeral>We don't know precisely. <v Dean Simeral>And further, no serious thought should be given to place in the band until we know <v Dean Simeral>precisely how significant is the foreign investment in land. <v Speaker>On the other side, the smaller Ohio Farmers Union strongly supports <v Speaker>the bill. <v Charlie Nash>We've got one half of all of our states within the United States that have legislation <v Charlie Nash>that does suppress in one form or another in an ownership farmland. <v Charlie Nash>We've had land inflated within the state of Ohio farmland that some 20 percent

<v Charlie Nash>for the past year. <v Charlie Nash>We maintain when I say we, the farmers union organization maintains that this is <v Charlie Nash>a contributing factor, has been investment from foreign land. <v Charlie Nash>The national average is 14 percent. <v Charlie Nash>And we're six percent above that. <v Speaker>What the Farm Bureau's Dean Simeral disagrees. <v Dean Simeral>When you're talking about investments of less than half percent of the total or <v Dean Simeral>whatever, then it can't be identified as having much of an impact <v Dean Simeral>on price. <v Speaker>The farmers unions major concern is the preservation of the family farm <v Speaker>through helping young farmers. <v Speaker>And we feel that right now, anything to prohibit young farmers from <v Speaker>investing in farmland. Anything that's going to hinder him is a detriment to this nation <v Speaker>because the average age of our farmers, something like 62 years of age. <v Speaker>But to blame the problems the young farmer has getting started on foreign <v Speaker>investment is misguided, according to Simeral.

<v Dean Simeral>The fact that land is extremely expensive and the fact that it takes <v Dean Simeral>a lot of capital to get started in agriculture is the reason it is difficult for someone <v Dean Simeral>without that capital to get started. <v Dean Simeral>But there's no reason to believe that the foreign investment is the one that has <v Dean Simeral>led to that increase in price or that increase in the cost of <v Dean Simeral>getting started. We're as concerned about the maintaining the family <v Dean Simeral>farm, as anyone could be. <v Dean Simeral>But we don't see that the. <v Dean Simeral>Prohibiting the foreign investment is in and of itself going to <v Dean Simeral>have any impact on the question. <v Dean Simeral>Will the family farms survive? <v Speaker>This is just a sample of the debate that tends to obscure some of the larger implications <v Speaker>involved in outlawing foreign ownership of farms. <v Speaker>Representative Brands still believes the Farm Bureau is most interested in preserving <v Speaker>the agro business type of farming operation. <v Speaker>In that regard, and I, incidentally, am a member of both farm organizations and I am a

<v Speaker>farmer. But I know that farmers union, they are concerned for the family farmer. <v Speaker>Not not that Farm Bureau is not. <v Speaker>But I think Farm Farmers Union is concerned only about the, <v Speaker>the effect that it will have on farmers- farming, not the effect it may have on the agri <v Speaker>business community. <v Speaker>Current Lauseker from West Germany works for one of those foreign investors. <v Speaker>He is general manager of the Daily Egg Farm in Union County de <v Speaker>Lay in Bavaria. Farms, also owned by West Germans, own more than 2000 <v Speaker>acres near Marysville. <v Speaker>Lausecker gives his view of the proposed ban. <v Kurt Lausecker>I think this would be unfair compared with a <v Kurt Lausecker>high amount of acreage since American companies own in Europe, <v Kurt Lausecker>mainly in Germany. Oh. <v Kurt Lausecker>General Motors or IBM or almost every <v Kurt Lausecker>big company sets American company has

<v Kurt Lausecker>ownership in Germany. <v Speaker>Simeral of the Farm Bureau echoes this view. <v Dean Simeral>I think we have to keep in mind that there are plus factors in foreign investment. <v Dean Simeral>It has a positive impact on our balance of payments. <v Dean Simeral>It has a positive impact on returning some of those dollars to this country, <v Dean Simeral>that eventually need to be returned to this country because our foreign banks <v Dean Simeral>are full of American dollars. <v Kurt Lausecker>I think it has just positive affects. <v Kurt Lausecker>We employ almost 75 people <v Kurt Lausecker>right now and another half a year. <v Kurt Lausecker>I guess it's almost time, about 120. <v Kurt Lausecker>And, well, we buy green. <v Kurt Lausecker>We would like to be a part of the economy here. <v Speaker>But Joseph Waterman of a group called S.O.S. <v Speaker>America is worried about foreign control of American markets. <v Speaker>And so many of these purchases are done by corporations that are owned by another <v Speaker>corporation and is owned by another corporation, formed in a foreign company, a country

<v Speaker>that you don't have the slightest idea of who is really owning them. <v Speaker>It affects them enough that someday, if it's allowed to go on, there won't be any small <v Speaker>farmer. And not only that, the if enough land gets into control <v Speaker>of foreign ownership, you will have production and prices controlled <v Speaker>by those foreign owners. <v Speaker>S.O.S. America's slogan is, let's wake up. <v Speaker>We may be sleeping on foreign soil, but members of the Ohio Farm <v Speaker>Bureau meeting recently in Columbus for their annual convention didn't <v Speaker>seem very confused about who the land belongs to. <v Speaker>This is. <v Speaker>I think I read all

<v Speaker>along these lines. <v Speaker>With us in the studio to discuss this issue are State Representative Dale Locher, <v Speaker>chairman of the House Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee, and Larry Kandal, <v Speaker>associate director for public relations for the Ohio Farm Bureau. <v Speaker>Mr. Kandal, what is the Ohio Farm Bureau's major concern when it comes <v Speaker>to foreign investment in Ohio farmland? <v Speaker>Our annual meeting was just completed with three hundred and seventy delegates discussing <v Speaker>this issue. Their primary concern was in the area of possible tax advantages to <v Speaker>foreigners, and they're reassured that that possible problem <v Speaker>could be rectified through a higher legislature activity. <v Speaker>Representative Locher, even with a law like the one that passed, you are Cornette. <v Speaker>Even if we had that, wouldn't it be possible to hide who owns the land through a dummy, <v Speaker>corporations and trusts? <v Speaker>Well, the at the federal level, as well as the state level, we do have a reporting

<v Speaker>process which tracks that down, especially the federal a federal level threw out <v Speaker>that dummy corporation. And I think from what experience we're finding now, they're <v Speaker>going to be able to track that pretty far. And I think it would be very effective. <v Speaker>I don't think that would be a possibility. <v Speaker>Rivers of luck. How can we forbid foreign ownership of anything when the United States <v Speaker>owns so much of other countries? <v Speaker>Well, one of the one of the things that did come up in the committee was that there are <v Speaker>some 32 other countries that prohibit alien investments, which says it prohibit prohibit <v Speaker>the United States from investing in their countries, Greece and Italy, Japan, <v Speaker>Mexico, Portugal. Several of these countries are those that are investing here that we <v Speaker>do business with. I think that we ought to have the same thing without really causing <v Speaker>any imbalance of problems there. <v Speaker>Federal records indicate that there are about maybe 8000 acres out of 17 <v Speaker>million total owned by foreign investors. <v Speaker>Do you think your committee overreacted in passing this bill? <v Speaker>No, but I don't think we've got the proper statistics yet on what is being and I just was <v Speaker>in Washington a week ago. And at the federal level, they are showing some surprising

<v Speaker>statistics, increasing in the amount of alien ownership in land, period. <v Speaker>I'm not just in Ohio. I think we're going to see that in Ohio. <v Speaker>There's going to be more reporting and they still have some time to report. <v Speaker>I think we're going to see a great deal more land that is being under foreign ownership. <v Speaker>So you don't think your committee is overreacting? No, and I don't think so for another <v Speaker>reason. You know, one of our problems is that we wait till after the problem is on us and <v Speaker>then we want to react to it. And I'd much prefer addressing ourselves with the problem <v Speaker>now and saying no foreign ownership rather than having a problem like we have with our <v Speaker>oil situation now where the foreign countries are saying, you've had it, we've got <v Speaker>control. <v Speaker>Mr. Kandal, don't most farmers fear a concentration of land ownership by <v Speaker>by any large agribusiness corporation as much as they fear foreign investment investment? <v Speaker>Aren't American corporations buying up as much land or more land and then foreign <v Speaker>investors? <v Speaker>Now, the fact is from statistics that we have available, that neither corporations nor <v Speaker>foreign investors are buying it up in anywhere near the kind of figures that some <v Speaker>of the sensational stories would tend to indicate that although farmers have a concern

<v Speaker>of this possibility happening, there been many times in the history of both <v Speaker>Ohio and the United States where foreign ownership has been much higher than it has been. <v Speaker>Now we've survived. That was certainly no problems. <v Speaker>And I think basically the more advantages to this than our disadvantage. <v Speaker>So you're saying then that in the future we're not likely to see most Ohio farms run by <v Speaker>giant corporations? They will still be family farms. <v Speaker>Well, it's proven that most of the corporation experiences have shown that <v Speaker>they really can't run the farms as effectively, as efficiently. <v Speaker>From a corporation standpoint, as a farmer who owns land, who's involved in it for his <v Speaker>own personal business. <v Speaker>Representative Locher, on the one hand, the state is bending over backwards to attract <v Speaker>foreign investors. And then on the other hand, your committee passed a bill prohibiting <v Speaker>it. Do you see any possible conflict there? <v Speaker>No, we're talking about a couple of different entities. <v Speaker>When you're talking foreign investment, I don't mind their investment. <v Speaker>But when you're talking about owning the land and response to the comment we've just made <v Speaker>about the amount of acreage, foreign investment is smart money and they're looking

<v Speaker>for prime ag land. They don't want to rock piles that I have to raise my garden in. <v Speaker>They want prime ag land, which is which is another significant point. <v Speaker>Now, I don't think that is an overreaction. I'm glad to have them invest, but not in <v Speaker>buying the one commodity, which is a non replenishable source, <v Speaker>which is the land itself. <v Speaker>But what's really the difference between Honda buying land to build a motorcycle plant <v Speaker>and a group of West Germans buying land to build an egg farm? <v Speaker>The primary difference there is that the if handled properly and I think we need to go <v Speaker>a little further than than just prohibiting foreign investment. <v Speaker>If handled property properly, the prime ag land should be <v Speaker>preserved so that you don't have that type of foreign investment picking up that to put <v Speaker>a Honda plant or anything else on it. There are other places that they can build. <v Speaker>They can. They can, at least from American factories. <v Speaker>If that was an alternative offered, hey, the smart money says they can make money here if <v Speaker>the alternative is leasing an American established built factories such as General Motors <v Speaker>that several plants.

<v Speaker>Not put their money there. I say that very positively, I don't. <v Speaker>I don't check with my foreign investors to see. But from what I can gather and the <v Speaker>information we've had, that's a valid statement. <v Speaker>Representative Locker, I read something where it said Department of Agriculture <v Speaker>statisticians said that the conversion of good farmland to <v Speaker>highways, factories and homes by Ohioans is of much <v Speaker>greater concern or should be of much greater concern than the threat of foreign takeover <v Speaker>of farmland. How would you react to that? <v Speaker>I think presently it probably is as great a concern. <v Speaker>But one of the things that always happens is if you if you can't detract head on <v Speaker>with a problem, what you do is say, well, geez, smallpox is as bad as measles, <v Speaker>which is supposed to dissipate the problem. <v Speaker>Yeah, we have problems with our highways. Yeah. We ought to control how those are abused. <v Speaker>But I think our foreign invest, at least we still have the land here and we still have <v Speaker>the power as a state to say cease and desist, etc.. <v Speaker>When you're talking about foreign investment, once that foreign company owns the land <v Speaker>here, then you're talking about an international incident.

<v Speaker>When you say we're going to nationalize all the lands this year, whatever the problem is, <v Speaker>we've really got a problem. Therein lies the difference to me between state. <v Speaker>There is abuse, genuinely is abuse, and we ought to be cognizant it and work towards <v Speaker>it and do something about it. We're at this time addressing alien ownership because that <v Speaker>seems to be more of a problem in the forefront at this time. <v Speaker>Are you satisfied with the bill as it is, and do you think it has a good chance of <v Speaker>passing the full house? <v Speaker>I think it has a very substantial chance of passing the full house. <v Speaker>I think at this time it is a decent bill. <v Speaker>There is argument about it being unconstitutional. <v Speaker>And I've got to get a shot in here. <v Speaker>The people in my district in the state of Iowa hired me to be a legislator, not to be a <v Speaker>Supreme Court justice, to decide whether it's constitutional or not. <v Speaker>That's not my game. I am to legislate what is asked for by people. <v Speaker>And I think, frankly, it is constitutional. We've checked enough to find that it is <v Speaker>acceptable, but I think it has a good chance. <v Speaker>And I think it's probably a solid. But it's not it's not a strong bill. <v Speaker>It's not a destructive bill. <v Speaker>It's very neat and very rather precise. I mean, I think it has a good chance of being

<v Speaker>passed. <v Speaker>Mr. can't use your organization as taking a more active role in <v Speaker>this bill when they meet again in January. <v Speaker>We've had several of our farmer members testify on the bill to this point, and I would <v Speaker>assume that that would continue. <v Speaker>There's also a federal legislation addressing the problem of the capital gains tax. <v Speaker>That's not only passed the Senate, but it's being heard in the House this past week. <v Speaker>Speculation is that it's moving very well and would progress when <v Speaker>they resume the beginning of the year. <v Speaker>We would be strongly supportive of that. And for the time being, until the secretary of <v Speaker>state's reports and so forth are complete. We think that that would certainly be well <v Speaker>enough for the problem. <v Speaker>Okay. Well, thank you very much, gentlemen. That's all the time we have. <v Speaker>Our pleasure. <v Speaker> Next week on Ohio Journal. <v Speaker>We'll look at charges that the state is dumping mental patients out of institutions <v Speaker>and into the community without the help they need to live on their own. <v Speaker>And a look at how two editorial cartoonists view their work. <v Speaker>This program was made possible in part by a grant from the Ohio Educational Television

<v Speaker>Network Commission.