Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, April 8, 1993 TAG: 9304080629
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A16 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DONALD J. FEICK
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
BINGO CAN'T BE COMPARED TO LOTTERY
IT WAS QUITE disappointing to read the March 10 editorial, "Jackpot doesn't go to charities" in the Roanoke Times & World-News. To imply that the lottery is better, because it returns 40 cents on the dollar to the state compared to the 10 cents on the dollar that bingo makes available for charitable purposes, is akin to saying that radio is a better news medium because it only costs a few pennies for electricity compared to 35 cents per copy for the newspaper.There are costs of doing business associated with each bingo game that are not comparable with the lottery. For one thing, your editorial pointed out that the lottery only returns 50 cents of every dollar to the players in prizes. Bingo returns about 75 cents in prizes.
In addition, the materials, services, rent and the city's auditing fee or tax add another 13 cents. That only leaves 10 cents, every bit of which should go to charities. Roanoke is doing a good job of monitoring this.
Speaking for the Knights of Columbus, which is all I can do, it should be clearly understood that no members receive anything for their work nor does the organization. On the other hand, the lottery has paid employees and some of your lottery dollars go toward their salaries. This doesn't make the lottery bad and bingo good. It is just, again, differences that make it difficult to accept the conclusions reached by your editorial writer.
I personally feel that the city has done a good job of monitoring bingo in the past couple of years. We in the Knights of Columbus have found the finance department to be very helpful and fair. We have no reason to believe that this will change as they look at the question of how rapidly the funds are dispersed. Each organization that has bingo must hold some funds back to cover possible losses. If only 70 players would have shown up recently for our game, we would have still awarded guaranteed prizes of $2,500 plus a winner-take-all game and perhaps another $500 to $700 in instant-bingo prizes. We can lose under those circumstances and it does happen. Weather and holidays will cause us to lose money, and we must have money in the bank to protect our winning players.
In fiscal '91, Knights of Columbus did not spend all that we took in. But in fiscal '92, we spent $17,000 more than our income. At the end of a year, if we do not have a good cause to which to donate our bingo money, then it is only prudent to wait until such a cause comes along.
I hope your readers realize that there are some wonderful bingo players in the valley who derive a great deal of pleasure, and at the same time provide hundreds of thousands of dollars for such local charitable causes by patronizing the various bingo sponsors.
\ AUTHOR Donald J. Feick is bingo committee co-chairman for the Knights of Columbus, Council 562, in Roanoke.