Gov. Ed Rendell is ready to roll the dice. Again.

At a time when Pennsylvania is staring at more than $2 billion of red ink in the state budget, Rendell is actually hoping to increase some spending.

Specifically, the governor wants to allocate a boatload of money to college students attending one of the 14 state-owned universities or a community college.

Students whose family income is less than $100,000 would be eligible for as much as $7,600 in financial aid for tuition, books, room, board and fees.

We’re talking about a program that could eventually help 170,000 students get into or stay in college.

That’s the good news. Here’s the bad part. It comes with a price tag of $550 million annually.

Where exactly is that money going to come from when the state is facing the starkest economic crisis it’s seen in decades?

Glad you asked. Can you say ‘gambling?’

Rendell opened this Pandora’s Box a couple of years, ushering in an entire new era of legalized gambling in the state with the addition of slots parlors, including Harrah’s Chester Casino & Racetrack.

I’ve always thought it was only a matter of time that once the state started down that road, there was no going back. Every time a need for new funding arose, eyes would immediately turn to gambling. I was wondering when table games would be introduced alongside all those slot machines.

Apparently Rendell doesn’t want people to have to travel that far. The governor has his eyes on what has been a long tradition in this state, albeit one that was not always exactly legal.

The governor wants to legalize video poker machines in taverns and private clubs. This likely will come as news to bar owners who have been raided in the past couple of years for paying off on those very same machines.

It is believed that there are 17,000 illegal poker machines currently operating in Pennsylvania. Rendell’s idea is to legalize them, then slap a tax on 50 percent of the net proceeds.

The state’s 14,000 bars and other establishments with liquor licenses could have as many as five machines.

It is a gamble. Literally.

There will be cries of protest from those who in general do not believe the state should be pushing more and more legalized gambling on citizens who are all too often more than willing to dump their weekly paycheck into them before heading home to the family – and a stack of unpaid bills.

Then I suppose there will be some complaints from senior citizens and others who depend on funding from the state lottery. You would think video poker would supplant the sales of some lottery tickets.

And there might be one area of protest the governor has not counted on. If I’m Harrah’s, and I’m paying a huge tax bite to the state on my gambling take, I’m not sure I’d be too thrilled with suddenly having competition at every tavern in the state. I’d want those people sitting at my slot machines, not at their local tap room.

Rendell is set to unveil his budget proposal today. It will include a lot of red ink. There is talk of job cuts, and reduction in services.

But there will be additional spending in at least one area, that $2.5 billion in red ink not withstanding.

Increasing aid to college students is hard to argue against. But this proposal is going to raise a lot of hackles.

It’s Rendell in his element. Rolling the dice. Again.