The following is a Counterpoint column:

By Mary Sue M. Cheek

A few weeks ago, the preacher in my mainline Protestant church referred to the "sleazy" way our state Legislature passed the lottery bill into law. At that time, there was a flurry of protests in the media. In an editorial, the News & Record said it best: that our state Legislature had lost its "integrity."

Gov. Easley waited several weeks (to let the furor die down?) before naming the lottery commission which is charged with setting up and running the lottery.

Charles Sanders, who had opposed the lottery, was named by Easley as lottery commission chairman. Sanders, retired chairman of Glaxo Inc., has an excellent reputation and appears above reproach. Sanders is quoted as saying he and the commission will make the contracting, hiring and other processes involved in setting up the lottery as transparent as possible. The commission, led by Sanders, has already developed an ethics policy, published within the past week, something done by few other boards.

Now it appears there were more sneaky (my own term) activities going on in the Legislature before the lottery bill became law. According to the media, a vice president of Scientific Games, the leading contender for our lottery business, helped write our lottery bill and wrote it in such a way as to favor Scientific Games and to eliminate competition. However, Sanders has been quoted as saying that he and the commission do not feel pushed toward any one choice; he also pointed out that they have been given "free rein."

And now, let all of us lottery opposers become lottery watchers. Let's see if our lottery really does become an educational lottery. Will our Legislature really continue to fund public school education at its current level, continuing to raise teacher salaries and per-pupil expenditures at the same rate as before as well as support lottery-funded college scholarships as promised by lottery supporters before the bill was passed?

Remember the pro-education group pointed out that in some states funding for public education went down after their lotteries became law and that public education that depended on lottery funds turned out to be an inefficient way to fund public education. We will wait and watch and see.

The writer is a retired public school elementary teacher, an advocate for children and lives in Burlington.