AUSTIN—After a two-decade record of failing to deliver on its promises, the Texas Lottery Commission should be abolished, several Texas Baptists and others told the state’s Sunset Advisory Commission in an April 10 public hearing.
The Sunset Advisory Commission reviews and evaluates the need for state agencies and seeks public input through hearings on whether an agency under review should continue to exist.
Apart from some substantive changes regarding the regulation of charitable bingo, a staff report issued prior to the hearing focused mostly on issues such as increasing the size of the Texas Lottery Commission, requiring the commission to develop a comprehensive business plan and mandating that the commission develop complaint procedures.
Rob Kohler, a consultant with the Texas Baptist Christian Life Commission, challenged the Sunset Advisory Commission to “look at the big picture” and ask whether it is time for Texas to revisit whether the lottery is an appropriate and effective tool for raising state revenue.
“Ask the hard questions: Where is the money coming from? Where do the sales come from? What effect has it really had on education?” Kohler said.
He urged the commission to ask what socio-economic, demographic and sales data are available on the players by year and lottery product. He also asked if the lottery has provided a real increase in education funding or whether it simply replaced other revenue sources.
Sunset Advisory Commission Chair Dennis Bonnen, R-Angleton, insisted his commission focuses on examining the effectiveness and efficient operation of state agencies, not major public policy issues such as the abolition of a state lottery.
“Don’t expect that we are going to put a poison pill in the commission report that will kill the lottery,” he warned.
But Rodger Weems, chairman of Texans Against Gambling/Stop Predatory Gambling in Texas, countered by saying, “The name of the commission itself suggests there are times when some state agencies should ride off into the sunset.”
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Weems noted several colleagues at the Dallas-area public school where he teaches urged him to tell the Sunset Advisory Commission how unhappy schoolteachers are that the lottery broke its promises to fund public education.
“It is not just experts who know that the Texas Lottery, no matter how well-intentioned, has failed to provide additional funding—new money—for Texas public schools,” Weems said. “And it’s not just the experts who realize that the lottery does its business on the backs of the poor. Both sad facts are now common knowledge in the state of Texas.”
As an alternative, Weems recommended the alcohol excise tax be raised 10 cents per serving or 60 cents per six-pack.
“Doing away with the lottery and raising the alcohol tax by just 10 cents per can of beer, serving of wine or mixed drink would produce revenues of approximately $1 billion a year,” he said.
Bill Brian, an attorney and member of First Baptist Church in Amarillo, quoted the introduction to the staff report on the Texas Lottery Commission, saying, “The …commission walks a tightrope in balancing the many contradictions in the state’s attitudes about gaming.”
The report notes the tension between a mandate to design and market lottery games to increase sales while operating under “statutory direction to not unduly influence anyone to buy a lottery ticket.”
“That points to the conflict of interest inherent in the gaming enterprise,” Brian said, insisting that the state has no business being involved in operating gambling and enticing some of its most vulnerable citizens to participate.
“It’s time to get rid of the state lottery,” said Weston Ware, who served from 1982 to 2000 as associate executive director of the Texas Baptist Christian Life Commission.
In 1991, Texas voters approved a constitutional amendment authoring the lottery’s creation based on “false promises … that the lottery would be a major funding resource for public education in Texas,” Ware said. Lawmakers should re-examine the ethics of a state-run gambling operation, he insisted.
“The lottery is a business that cannot thrive without abusing citizens, so it is a business Texas should not be involved in,” Ware said.
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