|
NC Should Keep Standards High, Spurn Seduction of the "Magic Lottery Pill" |
|
by Dr. Carl Mumpower
Op-Ed
Asheville Citizen-Times
April 26, 2005
In his opinion piece,
"Because Education Must Be Top Priority for NC, and Higher Taxes Arent
the Answer, Time Has Come to Create a State Lottery," (AC-T, April 3),
NC State House Speaker Jim Black offered passionate arguments for a new
state lottery. Struggling with mounting budget pressures, limited
interest in spending reductions and not many places left to tax, one
can sympathize with his dilemma. What is less compelling, however, is
the foundation of deeper facts, fantasies and fabrications that seem to
be guiding our legislators toward their final decision.
The
arguments favoring state-run lotteries typically begin and end with
another state-controlled program-public education. Knowing this subject
tugs at our heartstrings like a rerun of "Old Yeller," education has
become the selling point of choice for those favoring a lottery. There
are examples of success, but that picture is fading with the passage of
time, and every new state lottery that takes another slice of the pie.
Ask the many states who have educated their citizens to believe that
the lottery is the easy answer to education funding that now find those
same citizens, when faced with a vote on a needed school bond,
increasingly inclined to say, "Let Lotto do it," and vote the bonds
down. Ask the states that have seen their lottery revenues steadily
decline, and expenses and corr!
uption g
o up, and the "magic lottery
pill" turn to a distracting poison as the novelty wears off and things
go from new and exciting to humdrum and habitual.
Another
oft-cited argument, also tendered by Speaker Black, is that NC citizens
are spending $300 million a year to support other states education
lotteries. This statistic is highly questionable because states do not
ask for the addresses of ticket purchasers, and in fact can only
"guesstimate" on the basis of winnings. Those winnings represent 50
percent of all lottery dollars, and if you add in administration costs,
only about 25 percent of every lottery dollar goes into education. This
leak of less than $100 million in education dollars may sound like a
great deal of money to folks like you and me, but to the people
responsible for our annual $17 billion state budget, an additional $100
million, or [half of a] percent, is not a budget maker.
A deeper
look at a lottery version of lady luck finds that a majority of lottery
players come from low-income families and minorities. It is doubtful
that we will ever realistically uplift anyone by offering a state-run
lottery as a source of hope and opportunity over more tangible
foundations like a decent job. Its one thing for the wealthy to take
their discretionary money and do a junket to the blackjack tables at
Las Vegas, but quite another to take food, clothing and shelter money
to buy a few weeks of hope against lottery odds that are hopeless.
Lotteries have been well described as a "tax on the foolish" - a
curious but sadly accurate label for a program that is advertised as a
support to education.
When you take a closer look at how tightly
the revenues from a lottery bill will be channeled, who will have that
responsibility and how this process can be manipulated, the lottery
picture loses still more luster. Our state government has a history of
man!
y succes
ses, but it can be argued that efficiency, accountability
and constraint are not part of that story. One has to wonder if a
comparatively small budget enhancement is worth the hidden costs and
risks attached.
There are other arguments for and against a
lottery, but one that holds personal resonance centers on the spiritual
and personal values that have guided our state through a long and
arduous history. Those values say that where our state government can
go and should go are very different places. Those values say that
government should serve through standards that are not well represented
in advocating an addictive activity such as gambling and regressive
taxation that mocks Robin Hood by robbing from the poor to give to who
knows who.
The lottery, like most shortcuts to happiness, is
beckoning our state legislators to get with the program, join the gang
and reach out for that lucky bucket of money. Our failure to embrace a
lottery is being sold as old-fashioned thinking, political naivete and
lack of creative initiative. These are soothing arguments, but like
most forms of seduction, poorly grounded in fact.
As this issue
makes its way through our state legislative process, it is my personal
hope that a majority of our legislators will reach a little higher and
deeper and stick with principles over tempting practicalities. We will
be poorer by a few dollars, but richer by our commitment to standards
of government that will say far more about our character than the
dubious distinction of joining the tattered parade of lotteries with a
state seal attached.
|
|
|
|
|
