Everybody is looking for money.

Gaps between budgets and income for families, churches, businesses and governments loom larger than the difference between my basketball skills and those of Michael Jordan. And there is no slam dunk answer to the problem as our economy bounces along the bottom, searching for a boost to the surface.

One of the dangers in looking for solutions in a dreary situation is grabbing for what appears to be a life preserver that in a different time would obviously be a millstone. During difficult times moral parameters tend to flex to accommodate pragmatic solutions.

It happened in 2005 when North Carolina’s legislature approved the lottery lie. Former Gov. Mike Easley said a lottery would provide $450 million a year for additional education money in the state. Free money.

He grossly overestimated income to dress the lottery sow in silk. All the while “gaming” industry lobbyists were writing the actual laws that would govern our lottery. People are in jail from those proceedings.

Of course “education” lottery income melted into the state budget like raindrops fall into a lake. Its “education exclusive” designation became flexible even while the 2006 state budget was being formulated as legislators looked for road construction funds.

Income has been well short of original estimates. Yet programs were put in place based on the estimates and now cuts or more taxes are the only two options to meet the constitutional requirement that North Carolina have a balanced budget.

Into this black hole steps another gambling industry initiative that promises $498 million a year in state income and whose public relations arm is saying, “Tax us.”

Video gambling interests are saying if the state will just legalize their “games” and tax the revenue they could close the budget gap by a half billion dollars. That idea is a millstone masquerading as a life preserver.

Ask South Dakota
Kristen Kridel, writing for the Chicago Tribune as Illinois implements newly approved video gambling legislation, referred to Sioux Falls, S.D., where there are now “mom-and-pop casinos, pawn shops and payday lenders on almost every major street.”

The gambling industry refers to its products as “games.” In fact they are gambling exercises and their purpose is neither entertainment, nor to provide tax revenue to the state, nor to benefit the gullible gambler. Their only purpose is to extract from the hopeless or careless money to enrich the machine owners and the entourage that surrounds them.

De Knudson, a Sioux Falls city council member said most residents she talks to have friends, relatives or co-workers with a video gambling problem.

The machines are “so convenient. They’re everywhere. They’re so addictive,” she said. “Video (gambling) was a devastating development for South Dakota.”

Analysts in Illinois predict as many as 45,000 machines could infect the state. Income is unpredictable because gambling revenue tends to surge when new ways to burn your money are introduced. Illinois estimates between $300 million and $641 million a year in tax revenue.

That number is totally a guess because everything depends on promotion and how gullible — or desperate — people become. There was nearly a 15 percent drop in gambling revenues from casinos, the lottery and horse racing in Illinois last year.

In North Carolina 2009 lottery sales exceeded expectations.

According to Kridel, Illinois lawmakers passed video gambling without holding public hearings. If they had, they likely would have heard statistics about these effects:

Easy accessibility eases social prohibitions and promotes more frequent wagering.

It takes about a year for video gamblers to become compulsive, compared to 3-1/2 years when betting on horses, sports, etc.

Video gambling and lottery machines are placed more heavily per capita in poorer neighborhoods.

Those with lower incomes are more prone to see wagering as a way out of economic misery.

Many of these arguments are the same as against a lottery. They are the same as used by most religious groups and responsible government advocates across the nation to try to hold back the tide of sentiment for more gambling outlets and opportunities to fund programs on the backs of the poor, without responsible tax policy.

We’re all looking for money … from someone else’s pocket.

Coleen Moore, board secretary of the Illinois Council on Problem Gambling, said the new Illinois law allows up to five video poker or slot machines per bar, restaurant, social club and truck stop. Such accessibility stamps video gambling with the imprimatur of approval.

Because there is instant feedback, high visibility outlets and a low “per play” price, video gambling or “convenience gambling” is more addictive than some other forms. A study by All Academic research said video lottery gambling is more strongly associated with pathological gambling than any other type of lottery game.

The National Gambling Impact Study Commission researched the topic 1997-1999 and video gambling is one of the few forms of wagering the commission spoke out against, according to Timothy Kelly, former executive director of the commission.

“The commission recommends that states should not authorize any further convenience gambling operations and should cease and roll back existing operations,” the report issued in 1999 states.

Kridel said at least two states, South Carolina and Louisiana, have rescinded or rolled back video gambling. The economic value of gambling machines is not very great because money wagered would have gone to other taxed businesses and forms of entertainment.

“The actual benefit is minimal, and yet the social cost is quite high,” said Kelly, now director of the DePree Public Policy Institute in Pasadena, Calif.

A video gambling bill is currently before the North Carolina legislature. Don’t let your representatives grasp for a life preserver that will be a millstone around our necks.