What can we Learn from Other States’ Lotteries?
Alabama lawmakers will meet in a special session Monday to take up a lottery proposal from Governor Robert Bentley. The governor wants lawmakers to pass a constitutional amendment setting up a lottery. The revenue would go to the general fund which supports agencies such as Medicaid, prisons, and mental healthcare. If passed, the plan would have to be approved by voters to go into effect.
Alabama’s one of six states that doesn’t have a lottery. To gain perspective on what’s happened elsewhere WBHM’s Andrew Yeager spoke with Mary Borg. She’s a professor of political economy at the University of North Florida where she’s studied lotteries.
Lotteries as a Revenue Source:
“It’s very subject to ups and downs regarding the economy. So for example, when the economy goes into recession, you’re going to see lottery funds fall drastically. It’s one of the things you can obviously give up when you’re worried about your paycheck.”
“[politicians] don’t tell you how much lottery revenues are relative to the entire state’s budget or the entire state’s revenue. In Florida they were saying that the lottery revenues were going to go to education. Even though it looked liked a big sum of money to people like you and me, it was reported that it would fund the schools in Florida for two days.”
“The other thing that you need to know about lotteries is they’re an expensive way to raise money. Because, first of all, when you think about a one dollar ticket, 50 cents of it has to go to prize. And then another, usually…15 percent goes to administrative costs. So really, if you’re looking at a one dollar lottery ticket, the state’s only getting about 35 cents of it.”
Learning from Other States:
“It’s been shown time and time again that people who are most likely to buy lottery tickets are poor and less educated and minorities. In the state of Florida, when we turn around and give funds that are coming from the, basically “have-nots,” and then we give those funds to college scholarships who are mostly the “haves,” it makes the regressivity of the lottery even worse. So I would say, in reality, saying that you’re going to have lottery revenue go into the general fund is actually less regressive than if you tie it to something like college scholarships.”
“The big jackpot games are much less regressive than the small scratch-off tickets or the little pick-three kinds of tickets that people do on a daily basis. The big jackpot games will attract people with higher incomes. So the more you rely on big jackpot games, the less regressive it’s going to be.”
Lotteries Long Term:
“They start big and they dwindle very quickly in terms of revenue because people lose interest. And it’s probably, will be more so the case for Alabama because there are so many lotteries already around them.”
Birmingham is 3rd worst in the Southeast for ozone pollution, new report says
The American Lung Association's "State of the Air" report shows some metro areas in the Gulf States continue to have poor air quality.
Why haven’t Kansas and Alabama — among other holdouts — expanded access to Medicaid?
Only 10 states have not joined the federal program that expands Medicaid to people who are still in the "coverage gap" for health care
Once praised, settlement to help sickened BP oil spill workers leaves most with nearly nothing
Thousands of ordinary people who helped clean up after the 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico say they got sick. A court settlement was supposed to help compensate them, but it hasn’t turned out as expected.
Q&A: How harm reduction can help mitigate the opioid crisis
Maia Szalavitz discusses harm reduction's effectiveness against drug addiction, how punitive policies can hurt people who need pain medication and more.
The Gulf States Newsroom is hiring a Community Engagement Producer
The Gulf States Newsroom is seeking a curious, creative and collaborative professional to work with our regional team to build up engaged journalism efforts.
Gambling bills face uncertain future in the Alabama legislature
This year looked to be different for lottery and gambling legislation, which has fallen short for years in the Alabama legislature. But this week, with only a handful of meeting days left, competing House and Senate proposals were sent to a conference committee to work out differences.
