EDITORIALS

Not keen on keno?

Lottery officials know how to play the game(s)

Sometimes state senators say the darndest things.

Reading a few of the published comments by The Hon. Jimmy Hickey of Texarkana last week, you'd think that the state senator doesn't quite understand the whole point of the Arkansas Lottery, aka the current Shame of the State. Doesn't he realize that the lottery will do whatever it needs to do to keep taking the suckers? And it matters not a whit what lawmakers like him think.

The papers say the senator from Southwest Arkansas wants the lottery commission to postpone its decision to allow electronic-monitoring games. (Think keno.) That is, put off the decision until the Legislature can officially weigh in on it next year.

Good luck, senator. Because the carnies who run our state lottery couldn't care less what mere legislators, oversight committees and wiser heads in general think. At least to judge by the way they've disregarded all such in the past.

Just last month, over the objections of the Legislature's oversight committee, the lottery's commission voted overwhelmingly to consider ginning up keno-type games. That's right: The types who run this state's lottery aren't about to stop taking the suckers just because our representatives and senators object. They'll do as they darned well please. Of course, they'll do it in the name of helping college students, even as college tuitions keep going up in this state.

Jimmy Hickey's response: Now just hold on a minute. Or as he put it in an email to the lottery's director, "I believe, at a minimum, that the decision to introduce these 'games' should be deferred until the will of the Legislature can be determined... ." That is, until the 2015 legislative session.

But the lottery isn't about to wait. That would be the responsible thing to do, but all the lottery's bosses seem to care about is the money, the money and the money. The lottery's director with the ecclesiastical name, Bishop Woosley, has proposed offering keno-type games come this fall. That way, the suckers could buy those tickets through a clerk just the way they do for other games. Then they'd sit in front of television screens located in bars or restaurants and wait for their numbers to be called. Or not called.

Jimmy Hickey told the papers that he wants the lottery to slow down. As he reasons, why go through the expense of buying all that equipment for a September launch if lawmakers scuttle the thing just a few months later? If the Ledge kills the new game in 2015, says Senator Hickey, "that would be a huge expense that would come out of the scholarships that otherwise would not have had to come out."

But that's the whole point, senator. Don't you understand? If the croupiers at the Arkansas Lottery can get their new games up and running now, then they can tell the Ledge when it objects later: But we've already spent the money to set these things up! You'd be wasting scholarship money to stop us now!

You bet these sharpsters are in a hurry. The better to force the hands of lawmakers next year. The people running the lottery know how to play these political games. They're pros.

They also grow desperate. Ticket sales have dropped in both 2013 and 2014. As if the public might finally be catching on. "We need new players and new money," to quote one lottery commissioner, Raymond Frazier, in a fit of honesty. "The newness of the lottery has worn off." As it sometimes does with even the flashiest hustles..

Editorial on 05/22/2014

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