News-Record.com

Pondering this quote in Mark's lottery story today:

"It does make me feel a little bit better knowing that the decision we made has helped the lottery from a player perspective and in turn helped our revenues," said Rep. Maggie Jeffus, a Greensboro Democrat and House budget writer.

I'm afraid Rep. Jeffus is entertaining contradictory thoughts.

The legislature, with her support, OK'd an increase in payouts for some lottery games. The idea was to entice more people to play and increase lottery revenues. The scheme worked.

The bottom line, as she noted, is that the change "helped our revenues." That means more money was transferred from individuals to the state. Which also means, from a "player perspective," that the change was a loser. The people risked more and, in total, lost more.

Should that really make Rep. Jeffus "feel a little bit better"?

Particularly when studies consistently show that the poor play more?

Mark also notes that the lottery commission wants to look into appealing to Hispanics, who apparently aren't contributing their fair share to lottery revenues.

Solution: Spanish-language advertising.

Problem: The lottery law says, "No advertising may intentionally target specific groups or economic classes."

So, the lottery people have to figure out how to intentionally target a specific group (Hispanics) without violating the law.

I hope, when they run their first Spanish-language ad, Hispanic advocacy groups will complain to the attorney general, and I hope he will nail the lottery commission the way he nailed gas price-gougers, who, ethically, are exactly on the same plane.

What I actually expect to happen is for the legislature to help out again and change the law so that the lottery commission can advertise any way it wants. Its ads already are designed to entice people to play, naturally, which believe it or not the law also prohibits.

This problem is a little thornier because it's obviously more exploitative to target Hispanics, but if doing so promises to bring in more money I have no doubt that compliant legislators will manage to feel better about it.