ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, May 29, 1996 TAG: 9605290116
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A6 EDITION: METRO
LOOKING TO new state lottery games to finance a major-league baseball stadium in Northern Virginia or to off-track gambling parlors in Roanoke to supplement city tax revenues are poor bets for good government.
Any doubt about the addictive nature of gambling should be blown away by the steady demand for new, more lucrative games of chance in Virginia to pay for every imaginable need - or want.
With the Houston Astros looking for a new home, investors are looking for a way to finance a stadium (assuming they can find a suitable site) and bring Virginia its first major-league sports team. Officials wisely have ruled out a statewide tax to subsidize the venture, and legislators are looking at some combination of user taxes and - surprise, surprise - new lottery games.
Is there anything the state can't have by simply spinning the wheel and picking a few new lottery games to play? Remember when the lottery was supposed to help fund education?
Virginia is growing increasingly reliant on legalized gambling to fund the costs of general government, costs that all citizens should pay, willingly, in taxes. But "tax" has become a politically taboo word, replaced, it seems, by "lottery."
Revenues from some kind of multistate lottery, such as Powerball, already are in the state's two-year budget. (A plan to introduce some form of Keno is on hold, for now.) And, as the Virginia Lottery Commission correctly points out, if the demand for lottery revenue continues to grow, the state will have to offer more games and new marketing strategies.
Is shilling a proper function of government?
More abhorrent even than pitching lottery tickets to pay for a stadium is the proposal to bring off-track betting to Roanoke. Here is where Roanokers and their neighbors will have their big chance - to lose lots of money in no time flat.
Unnamed "local interests" invited representatives of Colonial Downs - the state's only sanctioned racetrack - to look the city over as a possible site for one of its six off-track betting parlors. We can only hope it doesn't measure up.
Sure, the lure of easy money is there. Chesapeake, one of two Virginia cities already graced with a betting parlor, reports taxes on bets alone have reached $40,000 after less than four months. That $40,000 represents a lot of lost money that could have been better spent.
Gambling interests claim there are no ill effects from legalizing the vice - even as they eviscerate efforts to seriously study that hypothesis. Opponents can point to the experience of law enforcement officers - who say increased crime is the payoff from gambling, legal or illegal - and to studies such as a recent one at the University of Illinois that showed legalized gambling costs $3-$6 for every $1 it brings into state treasuries. And this is not to mention the cost, in family income and security, to the poor suckers who are addicted to losing money.
City voters would have to approve off-track betting, and the Virginia Racing Commission would have to give its nod, before it could come to Roanoke. We hope the matter won't get as far as a referendum - but we're not taking any bets.
LENGTH: Medium: 60 linesby CNB