A college scholarship for every graduate of an Ohio high school. One billion dollars a year deposited in to grant and scholarship accounts. More incentives for new and high-paying jobs right here in Ohio. There just has to be a catch. Thankfully for skeptics, there is such a catch to the Ohio Learn and Earn campaign to put college scholarships on the ballot. Turns out those scholarships will be paid for with . . . slot machines!

As we all know, summer time means petitions and signature gatherers pestering you and me to get their initiatives on the ballot. It just turns out some of those canvassers are less honest than others. The Ohio Council of Churches is alleging a “pervasive pattern of deception” among gatherers for Ohio Learn and Earn. Tom Smith, who is the Council’s director of public policy, was approached by a gatherer at a library and told- when asked- that money for the scholarships would not be provided by expanding gambling in Ohio.

Apparently even Ohio Learn and Earn has acknowledged this is a problem. Even though it says (in the last paragraph of its description) on its website that “Learn & Earn will be funded by proceeds on slot machines at 9 venues in Ohio,” its gatherers have been saying something else. Evidently Learn and Earn has received a number of complaints regarding this, but no one has mentioned any names. Misrepresenting the purpose, cause, or effects of a petition, of course, is a crime in the State of Ohio and is punishable by a maximum of six months in jail.

Your outrage in reading this, no doubt, will be proportional to your personal feelings on gambling, which has become quite the controversy here in Ohio. Coming from a state with both a lottery and Indian gaming casinos, I have no real problem with gambling or the fact that they provide much-needed resources to the state (or tribe). Maybe you feel the same way I do about gambling, or maybe you don’t. But you deserve to be told when you’re signing a petition to allow it. Learn and Earn has until August 9 to get more than 300,000 signatures to put their proposal on the ballot. Perhaps their efforts would be that much harder if those 300,000 knew what they were signing.