Loving the lottery
Published December 8, 2014
Editorial by Greensboro News-Record, December 7, 2014.
North Carolina Republicans have learned to love the lottery.
The state legislature created the lottery in 2005 without a single Republican vote in the Senate and with only seven in the House. It was established by Democrats to provide a new revenue source for education.
A lottery is poor public policy. The state should support schools through a system of fair taxation, not with the gambling losses of its residents.
That said, the N.C. Education Lottery has been operated responsibly and has produced more money for schools each year — from $315 million in 2007 to $503 million last year.
This amount is meant to supplement normal spending for education. Some people have the idea that the lottery covers the entire education budget. That’s far from the truth, and no one in state government ever said it would. The state spends nearly $8 billion a year for public schools, with lottery funds accounting for only a small part.
The legislature wants that portion to increase, however. This is a turnaround. Republicans have controlled the General Assembly for the past four years and could do away with the lottery they once hated. Instead, they’ve demanded that it produce more money — $520 million in the current fiscal year.
The lottery is on pace to do that, Communications Director Van Denton said last week. To boost sales, it launched new games this fall, including the 23-state Monopoly Millionaires Club, to go with Powerball and Mega Millions. Those games are most popular when the jackpots rise — and, unfortunately for the lottery, jackpots have been modest lately. Scratch-off cards still account for more than 60 percent of sales. Players find out instantly whether they’ve won or, more likely, lost.
Legislators keep tinkering with the lottery, or trying to. They have allowed a higher percentage of revenue to go out in prizes — 62 percent — which encourages sales and ends up producing more money for education.
Other changes have been bottled up by legislative leaders. A bill that would have increased the portion of lottery funds going to school construction had 70 sponsors in the House but died in an appropriations committee. Two bills passed the House by wide margins but died in the Senate without a hearing.
One of those was called the Honest Lottery Act. It would have put more restrictions on lottery advertising and removed the Lottery Commission’s authority to offer online games or games played on computer terminals or other electronic devices.
The lottery has not devised such games. As for a provision requiring the lottery to disclose the odds of winning a top prize, “We started doing that. We embraced that,” Denton said.
It’s clear the lottery is here to stay. Most Republican leaders conveniently have gotten over their objections. They’ve been able to cut taxes and tap the lottery for more money.
But state-sponsored gambling is a lousy substitute for taxes. The money is still coming out of North Carolinians’ pockets, although they usually aren’t the people who can most afford to pay. Republicans were right in 2005 and are wrong now.
December 8, 2014 at 11:07 am
Norm Kelly says:
It's refreshing to see a news paper on the proper and right side of a situation. The lottery is an inappropriate way to raise funds for ANY government expenditure. How do we know this? Because while trying to force state-sponsored gambling upon us, the same demoncrats were making private gambling illegal. Why? If gambling is bad, then gambling is bad. But in this case, those 'leaders' of the demon party who told us private-sector gambling was bad, told us that state-sponsored gambling is good. Having it both ways again.
The town of Cary did this not too many years ago. What's bad for the private sector is good for the government to do. Take pole signs as a perfect example. Cary banned these for ANY and ALL private businesses. Then Cary went about installing TOWN POLE SIGNS all over town. So not only is private gambling bad, but private advertising is also bad.
Of course, the main reason that state-sponsored gambling should be eliminated is because it's such a poor fund raiser for the state. For example, 62% of income from lottery sales is going out in winnings. This means that only 38% of every dollar in sales goes into the state coffers. Now, let's look at ANY other way of raising money. How much of every tax dollar goes into the state coffers? If you are a lib, this is a trick question. It's 100%! (government is financially extremely inefficient, but that's another argument. they still get 100% of every tax dollar raised.) Whether it's lottery income or any other type of money raising, the state will still be just as inefficient. The difference is that with lottery income, the state gets to be extremely inefficient with 38% of the money coming in, while they get to be extremely inefficient with 100% of all other types of revenue generation. For simple minded and libs, that's a 62% difference in the money government gets to play with. Which is considerable. And, if the lottery were eliminated, all that overhead of government workers would also go away. And people would start buying stuff at the stores instead of lottery tickets. Stuff that generates 100% of tax revenue for the state, not just 38%.
December 9, 2014 at 11:38 am
Richard Bunce says:
Norm, Robin Hood was stealing from the government and giving the people their taxes back... The Sheriff was the King's representative.
December 8, 2014 at 2:09 pm
Richard Bunce says:
Eliminate government (monopoly) gambling and open up private gambling. Also end the government War On Drugs.
