We in Arkansas officially deplore gambling, finding it destructive. So we allow only two providers, a horse track and a dog track, to reap all the private profit.
We officially deplore gambling, so we let the horse track and dog track operate casinos to protect their monopolies against out-of-state competition.
We officially deplore gambling, so we don't call these operations casinos. I believe we call them racinos.
We say that the games--the slots, the blackjack tables--are purely electronic and matters of "skill."
We officially deplore gambling, but we let the horse track accept online bets with its "Oaklawn Anywhere."
We officially deplore gambling, but we vote by a wide margin to set up a state lottery to provide money for education and spare the use of taxpayer funds for the college scholarships we deem important.
We officially deplore gambling, so the Legislature provides that the lottery may not become pervasive. The Legislature forbids the Lottery Commission from setting up video-monitor games in widespread retail locations.
That, you see, would make this activity upon which we have chosen to rely, but which we oppose, ubiquitous and destructive.
We officially deplore gambling, so the Lottery Commission says it is not moving into the video-monitor business.
It says the keno-style games it intends to begin operating in September will entail the purchase of cards with numbers, but not any actual human interactivity with video monitors. These monitors, it explains, merely will flash winning numbers every few minutes.
These simply will be little-bitty lotteries, one after the other, the Commission says. We need them, the Commission says, because the scholarship money is perilously waning.
So it turns out that state Sen. Jimmy Hickey of Texarkana has a special aversion to video gambling.
As a banker, he saw gambling's effect on working people. He says it tempts, exploits and harms the most vulnerable.
He sees keno-style screens as simple video monitor gambling of the type the Legislature fully intended to disallow in the lottery enabling legislation.
He prevailed on his incoming Senate leader, Jonathan Dismang of Beebe, to help him get a bill on this week's special-session agenda to ban expressly these kinds of games that the Lottery Commission plans to unveil in September.
Hickey and Dismang are more interested in restricting video gambling than in insulating Oaklawn. But Oaklawn has helped lobby for their legislation. That's because the legislation will, in fact, insulate Oaklawn.
Dismang helped Hickey secure sufficient Senate votes, and, presumably, sufficient House votes. But House Speaker Davy Carter opposes the idea.
Carter thinks the lottery question is too complex for a quick two-day special session. He says the Legislature can and should consider it in the more thorough and transparent regular session next year.
Dismang and Hickey counter that there would be no way to undo the games in February if they'd been piling up precious scholarship dough since September.
While senators could count a solid majority of House membership favoring the keno ban, Carter handpicked the membership of the House Rules Committee, where the measure would be referred.
Gov. Mike Beebe, interested only in pre-emptively decided issues with majority votes assured for a special session, initially yielded to Carter and kept the lottery matter off the agenda for the special session.
But then Dismang leaned on the governor with proof of majority votes, and Beebe relented.
The issue now becomes whether Carter, a lame duck as speaker, will have the will and muscle to dictate as usual to his personal Rules committee.
Late Monday, a compromise began to emerge in which Carter would yield--i.e., lose. A ban on lottery keno games would go into effect until March.
That would keep the Lottery Commission from creating the games before the next session and require the next Legislature to decide by March.
Either way, the issue will reveal our official inconsistency and ambivalence.
Are the white hats worn by those trying to protect our most vulnerable citizens from the destructive urges of easy and ubiquitous gambling? Or are the white hats worn by those trying to protect money for college scholarships?
Or are they worn by those trying to fight the monopolistic arrogance of Oaklawn?
We seem to have put ourselves in a situation in which there is no right vote.
There is only a question of severity among wrong votes.
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John Brummett's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at [email protected]. Read his blog at brummett.arkansasonline.com, or his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.
Editorial on 07/01/2014