EDITORIALS

There’s no end to them

Excuses from the Arkansas Lottery

“IWANT to give assurances to the commissioners and the public that this is not something that will happen again.”

That was the word this week from Bishop Woosley, who is not an ecclesiastical official despite that first name-unless you consider gambling a religious pursuit instead of a bad habit. Instead he’s the current director of the sporadically scandal-plagued Arkansas Lottery. He was addressing members of the state Lottery Commission in the aftermath of a guilty plea-to stealing $477,893-by the lottery’s now former deputy director of “security.”

At his salary (some $165,000 a year last time we checked), you’d think Mr. Woosley could at least come up with a line that wasn’t so old. “It won’t happen again.” Isn’t that what folks always say as they lock the barn door after the horse is out?

The lottery’s director did give that old line a little twist or two of his own, which only made his explanation worse. As in “we made a mistake. [The system] worked it a little late, but it worked exactly like it was supposed to.’’ A little late? Yep, it took only three years to detect and stop the thefts.

Only a little late? If that’s only a little late, then $477,893 is only a little amount of money.

It won’t ever happen again? If so, that’d be an historic first. State lotteries have been synonymous with scandal ever since there have been state lotteries. Back in the 19th Century, the Louisiana Lottery became a national symbol of Reconstruction Era corruption.

It’s not just the poor suckers lining up to buy lottery tickets who are looking for some easy money fast, but high-ranking officials like Remmele Mazyck, another of Big Ernie Passailaigue’s imports from South Carolina. And indeed he did make a fast buck-hundreds of thousands of them for years-till he was finally caught.

As usual, the excuse for this whole raid on the Treasury in the guise of a lottery is a variant of that old appeal, “It’s for the children!” In this case, college students who get scholarships after the big money goes first to the lottery’s overpaid administrators in salaries and expenses.

Director Woosley now has assured the state that “the students of Arkansas are not going to lose out.” At least not till the state’s administration-heavy, faculty-light system of higher education is financed the proper, direct and responsible way: through taxes instead of a glorified numbers racket.

But that kind of real reform would take some real responsibility and self-sacrifice on the part of We the People, wouldn’t it? And unlike those ubiquitous lottery tickets, those virtues are always in too short supply. For here The People Rule-or misrule.

Editorial, Pages 14 on 07/19/2013

Upcoming Events