Fitzsimon File

What is it about the lottery that makes generally reasonable people say bizarre things? Decent, well-intentioned legislators always seem to lose track of logic when the issue comes up.

The latest examples come from Eastern North Carolina. Rep. Alice Graham Underhill from Craven County recent told her local paper “I personally don’t think lotteries are a great way to do business.”

So far so good. Lotteries are indeed not a great way to do business. The revenue is unreliable, the money spent on lottery tickets takes money out of the economy in other places, and the state only gets a third of the dollars spent buying tickets.

That must mean that Underhill opposes the lottery. Well no, she says she is committed to support a referendum because her constituents want it. But North Carolina is not an initiative and referendum state. There is a strong argument to be made that a referendum is unconstitutional.

Legislators are supposed to make laws and budget decisions. Underhill’s constituents would probably want to vote on a lot of things, tax hikes, university tuition, providing health care to more people, but that’s the way our government works.
Then there is freshman Senator Harry Brown from Onslow County. Brown told the paper that he thinks “people with low incomes would try to see it as a get-rich-quick scheme and that would put them in more poverty,”
Exactly right. The lottery would hurt the poor. Studies show that people with lower incomes play the lottery more than folks with money. That won’t bother the folks running the lottery too much. They just want to sell tickets, and if poor people are more likely to play, that’s who the advertising will target with its misleading message.
That must mean that Senator Brown will vote against the lottery, to stop poverty from increasing in his district. No, Brown says that he wants to let the people decide, so he too supports the lottery referendum.
Wonder if people wanted to drive 100 miles per hour on Highway 17, if Brown would support that too. Part of a legislator’s job is to make informed decisions after studying issues. That is why they are elected. But Brown appears ready to vote for legislation that he knows will increase poverty—there’s a good idea.
The lottery lunacy continues.

 Email This Post  Print This Post

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 20th, 2005 at 9:44 pm and is filed under Fitzsimon File. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.