They made me do it
This is not the lottery story I wanted to work on.
The News & Record has been running a lot of wire copy on the lottery shenanigans. Basically, the three big points boil down to this:
- Lobbyists with a pretty strong connection to at least one lottery vendor submitted legal language to the General Assembly that was used in the final draft of the lottery law.
- At least one lottery commission member has pretty strong ties to that same company. Although, to be fair, he knows a lot of different lottery folks.
- At least one person in the House Speaker’s office may have had a legal duty to publicly disclose her lobbying work on behalf of the same lottery company, but didn’t.
As I said, I have other fish to fry (granted, some of them are leaving little IOU notes on my hook, but that’s another story), but there's been enough of a ruckus now that some local perspective is needed.
So here's the question that I’ve been asking some folks today: Given all that, if you are a lottery backer, is your faith in the lottery, or the state's ability to run a lottery, shaken? Even if you’re a lottery opponent, can the game still be redeemed? Or is all this a tempest in a teapot, Raleigh business as usual getting blown out of proportion because it’s related to the lottery?
Send your answers via the comment link below or e-mail: mbinker@news-record.com or ring me up: 919/832-5549.
Thanks.
Comments (2)
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Any of the unnamed people above from Guilford county?
Posted on October 21, 2005 11:48 AM
Inconveniently for me, no.
That's actually a big part of the balancing act for me on this story. It's a big deal, but it's not local in the sense that the most interesting players are local.
Posted on October 21, 2005 11:50 AM