A rewrite of the state’s gambling law authorizing slot machines at Ohio’s seven horse racing tracks will not include a provision allowing county commissions to contract with a private company to run a “charity card room.” The version does include a statewide moratorium on new sweepstakes parlors and Internet cafes until 2013.

The card room provision was yanked from the substitute version of House Bill 386 Tuesday, just before the Senate Government Oversight and Reform Committee unanimously passed the bill.

State Sen. Bill Coley, R-Middletown, chairman of the committee, said the charity card room language will be considered in a separate bill.

“Our members wanted more time to investigate,” Coley said. “We wanted to narrow or reign in proliferation of charity card rooms, but we were unwilling to give one county a monopoly as the House version did.”

Although it was opposed by Gov. John Kasich, supporters of the card-room language said it would limit a currently unregulated area of law that allows unlimited numbers of charity card games to operate in the state.

One card room in Cuyahoga County has been operating for years, where charities can pick days to have the proceeds go to them, and it appears others also are starting to create them.

• The version of HB 386, likely headed to a full Senate vote today, would set a statewide moratorium until 2013 on new sweepstakes parlors and Internet cafes as lawmakers work on ways to better regulate or outlaw the gambling businesses. Under a change made Tuesday, the bill would allow parlors that were operating before the moratorium to reopen and file an affidavit with the attorney general. They had been shut down by local authorities who later dropped their legal action.

• The bill also gives the Ohio Lottery Commission discretion on how much video slot machine revenue to earmark for gambling addiction services. The total can go up to 1 percent. The state has hired Kent State University to do a study on the gambling addiction problem in Ohio so that officials have a baseline going forward to help determine how much money is needed.

• The Senate bill requires the attorney general to submit a report by Dec. 31, 2013, on how to share law enforcement training funds from casinos with local law enforcement agencies. Until then, the training money will be centralized with the attorney general.

• A change also would prohibit new horse track racinos from calling themselves casinos, except for Northfield Park, which officials say has advertised itself as a “casino” for years.

Robert Tenenbaum, spokesman for Penn National Gaming Inc., called passage of the bill out of committee “progress.” He said the card room provision would have represented a “major expansion of the gaming industry in Ohio without a vote of the people.”

“In our view (pulling the language) was an appropriate way to handle it,” Tenenbaum said.

Penn National is building casinos in Columbus and Toledo and has proposed relocating a harness racing track, Raceway Park, from Toledo to Dayton.

“I sense there is a real commitment on part of both the House and the Senate to get the bills done,” Tenenbaum said. “I see nothing in the bill that’s going to cause us to back away from our commitment to relocate a racetrack to Dayton.”

The Columbus Dispatch contributed to this report.