Light’s green for on-screen lottery games

Panel’s OK disappointing, say governor, lawmakers

Arkansas Scholarship Lottery Commissioner Alex Streett (right shown along with Commissioner Mark Scott) noted that lawmakers “are subject to public comment and lobbyists calling on them” and have the authority to abolish the Lottery Commission’s powers.
Arkansas Scholarship Lottery Commissioner Alex Streett (right shown along with Commissioner Mark Scott) noted that lawmakers “are subject to public comment and lobbyists calling on them” and have the authority to abolish the Lottery Commission’s powers.

The Arkansas Lottery Commission will pursue the implementation of electronic-monitor games, the commission decided Wednesday - a day after a majority of the Legislature’s lottery oversight committee declared its opposition to the games.

A few lawmakers and Democratic Gov. Mike Beebe said they’re disappointed by the commission’s action.

In a voice vote with Commissioner Dianne Lamberth of Batesville dissenting, the nine-member commission approved a motion by member Mark Scott of Bentonville to allow the staff to proceed with monitor games. Commission Chairman George Hammons of Pine Bluff was absent.

Commissioners didn’t specify the exact games or set a timetable for launching them.

Scott told his fellow commissioners that the lottery needs to change its mix of products and services over time, just as McDonald’s and gambling enterprises do.

“We need to grow,” he said, adding that lottery Director Bishop Woosley suggested that this is the best way to do that after the lottery’s ticket sales and net proceeds for scholarships have declined for nearly two years.

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Lottery Director Bishop Woosley takes a question about the possibility of adding “keno” style games during a Arkansas Lottery Commission meeting on April 16, 2014.

The lottery has helped finance college scholarships for more than 30,000 Arkansans a year during the past four years.

But the 2013 Legislature trimmed the size of the scholarships for some future scholarship recipients, citing the lottery’s net proceeds lagging behind initial projections and more students than initially projected receiving the scholarship.

Woosley told lawmakers Tuesday that lottery players would purchase tickets for monitor games through a clerk as they do for draw games like Powerball and Mega Millions, and the draws would be shown about every four or five minutes on a 40-inch television screen. Fifteen state lotteries offer the “keno” and quick-draw monitor games, while one state lottery offers a card monitor game. A bingo monitor game is scheduled to begin in New Mexico in June, he said.

During the meeting, Commissioner Alex Streett of Russellville said monitor games face opposition from two groups - those who oppose lotteries and private gambling interests who want to limit competition.

State lawmakers “are subject to public comment and lobbyists calling on them, so I think you have take all of that into consideration and give them how much weight you want to,” he said.

Streett said the Legislature created the lottery commission when it enacted legislation creating the lottery in 2009 and it could abolish the commission’s powers in the future.

Commissioner Julie Baldridge of Little Rock said it was interesting that some lawmakers opposed what she considers to be a “fairly small incremental move on the lottery’s part,” to offer electronic-monitor games. In comparison, she said, “something that was ... fairly earth-shattering occurred” with Internet gambling authorized by the 2013 Legislature at the racetracks.

“I am not trying to be retaliatory. I don’t like to tiptoe around those kind of things,” Baldridge said. “I don’t see how one kind of gambling increasing and not being horrified at that but being horrified about the possibility if we move to make some incremental changes.”

Afterward, Lamberth said she voted against pursuing implementation of the monitor games because “I wanted a better consensus” with lawmakers.

“The Legislature had formed us, and I want them to understand what we are so they don’t come back in and say, ‘We are not going to do this,’ and start stripping things that we are now able to do,” she said. “I thought if we talked about it with them, if we sat down a little bit longer with them, that they might better understand the issues a little bit better, what we are and what we are not, what the game is and what the game is not.”

Afterward Woosley said he’s not sure what types of monitor games that the commission will deploy or when the monitor games will begin.

“We will make that decision as we progress toward implementing them,” he said.

Woosley said the Lottery Commission must decide whether to accept a contract renewal offer from Athens, Greece-based lottery vendor Intralot that includes 1,000 television screens, “or do you just go to them and say I want to buy X number of monitors.”

While Intralot is offering 1,000 monitors valued at $1.1 million, “we may never need that many,” he said.

At the meeting, the commission appointed Commissioner Bruce Engstrom of North Little Rock to work with Woosley in negotiations with Intralot regarding the company’s proposed contract renewal.

State Sen. David Burnett, D-Osceola, said Tuesday that he doesn’t believe that the Lottery Commission has legal authority to offer the monitoring games.

But a former House speaker, Robbie Wills, D-Conway, who is a lobbyist for Intralot, told the commission Wednesday that his intention as the sponsor of the state’s 2009 lottery law “was to give you all the authority that any other lottery commission in the United States had to implement any game, including monitor games.

“There was only one exception to that, and that was so-called video lottery terminals, those are slot machines,” he said. “We were asked by some of the interests that run those machines now to limit your authority, and we accommodated that request.”

Beebe, a Democrat, said he doesn’t like the commission’s decision to pursue monitor games.

“I think it expands on what the voters thought they were voting on [in 2008 when they approved the constitutional amendment authorizing the Legislature to create a state lottery],” he said.

Sen. Jimmy Hickey, R-Texarkana, whose motion to oppose the monitor games was approved by the lottery oversight committee Tuesday, said Wednesday that history shows that the most successful people and entities are the ones who are able to keep their vices within moderation.

“It is the responsibility of the people of Arkansas through its Legislature to make sure Arkansas stays within those boundaries. These gambling machines featuring a race of numbers every four minutes to bet on was not the intent of the people when allowing for a lottery ticket,” he said.

“We may need to reexamine all enabling legislation as it relates to the lottery,” Hickey said.

Sen. Missy Irvin, R-Mountain View, said she’s disappointed that the Lottery Commission didn’t listen to the lottery oversight committee, adding she’s worried about what amounts to having “mini-casinos” in restaurants and convenience stores.

She said she supports changing state law in the 2015 regular session to bar the lottery from offering monitor games.

While lottery oversight committee co-Chairman Sen. Robert Thompson, D-Paragould, lamented the Lottery Commission’s decision to proceed with the monitor games, he said he doesn’t know whether the Legislature should change state law next year to bar the games.

He said he wants to see what the commission does with the monitor games, how many are deployed and their effect on the state before he makes that decision.

In other business, the Lottery Commission decided to lift its 2009 ban on the lottery advertising on college campuses. Lottery officials said they would shift about $100,000 in advertising funds to cover the expenses.

Afterward, Woosley explained that several colleges have asked whether the lottery would like to place signs in their stadiums or run ads during sporting events and “we have negotiated with them just to see what is out there to see if we could do anything that would not run afoul of that [ban].

“I think there is a lot of opportunities,” Woosley said. He’d also like to see scratch off tickets with themes of some of the larger campuses, including the University of Arkansas and Arkansas State University. “They benefit from the proceeds and the revenue that we raise,” he said. “It is a win-win in my mind.”

Front Section, Pages 1 on 04/17/2014

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