Seems unlikely, but that won’t stop some folks from trying.
As lawmakers look at whether the Texas Lottery Commission is operating effectively, influential Baptists are suggesting that the lottery shouldn’t merely be tweaked. They want it abolished.
“Ask the pertinent questions. Has the lottery fulfilled its promise? My answer would be ‘no,’” said Suzii Paynter, director of the Baptist Christian Life Commission.
The group contends that the lottery was sold to Texans 20 years ago as a “voluntary, nonregressive” way to raise money but instead preys on the poor and caters to impulse purchases of scratch-off tickets. Attempts to attract higher-income players with $50 scratch-off tickets haven’t worked, they say.
They question whether the lottery has provided a revenue increase for public education or simply replaced other revenue sources.
[…]
While there may be bills next session proposing to do away with the lottery, Rep. Dennis Bonnen, the Angleton Republican who leads the sunset commission, warned in a recent public hearing that eliminating the lottery isn’t an option for the panel.
“It’s our job to make sure agencies are doing their jobs effectively with what they’ve been tasked to do,” he said. “Don’t expect that we’re going to put a poison pill in the sunset bill to end the lottery.”
After prize money, retail commissions and other expenses, about $1 billion a year from the lottery goes into a public education fund. Ticket sales in fiscal year 2011 totaled $3.8 billion, most of it coming from scratch-off tickets.
This year, lottery sales are 10 percent ahead of last year and are on track to surpass $4 billion for the year, executive director Gary Grief told legislators this month. Among top-grossing lotteries in the nation, Texas ranks fourth behind New York, Massachusetts and Florida.
I found this story via Believe it Or Not, which adds some more information.
Amid the recent Mega Millions lotto hype, Texas Baptists’ theologian-in-chief Jim Denison discussed the potential for lottery winnings to destroy lives. He warned Christians that playing the lotto can push them to seek happiness through money instead of through Christ.
Texas Baptists also opposes the expansion of legalized gambling through casinos and other gaming venues.
Paynter pointed out that two of the states highest-selling lottery ticket locations are Fiesta stores in Houston, and Rep. Garnet Coleman’s district spends $44 million on the lottery a year, more than others in the state despite being a lower-income area.
Coleman has supported the examination of the lottery system, with his own district spending more on the lotto than middle and high-income areas of Houston.
“I don’t know why I didn’t see it before,” Coleman told the Austin-American Statesmen in 2010. “It’s true and it’s real. I see who plays, and it’s not who folks think. It’s not entertainment.”
I largely agree with the Baptist Christian Life Commission that the Lottery has not fulfilled its promise, and I think there’s merit to their pursuit. The Lottery does generate some money for education, but it does so in just about the least efficient and most regressive way possible. We absolutely should do a better job providing for public education and we should do it in a way that doesn’t hurt lower income folks. But let’s be honest, that ain’t gonna happen. I’d bet on gambling being expanded before I’d bet on the Lottery being even scaled back, which is not to say that the former is a good bet.
One more piece to the puzzle: I recently came across this article in Wired about how it’s possible to get an edge in playing scratch-off games, which are the Texas Lottery’s bestsellers. Note that as of the story’s publication in January of 2011, the North American Association of State and Provincial Lotteries was unaware of this potential security hole, and that there’s a woman in Texas who’s managed to win over $1 million on four separate occasions, three of them coming from scratch-off games. The implication of all this is that there’s a possibility that scratch-off games are an even worse proposition for the average player than they’re supposed to be. Read the story and see why.