THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, February 19, 1997 TAG: 9702190005
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A13 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: OPINION
SOURCE: GLENN ALLEN SCOTT
LENGTH: 80 lines
Winning a Lotto jackpot is a life-changing experience.
When a conversation some years ago in the newspaper cafeteria turned to what-would-you-do-if-you-won-the-lottery? one of the lunch bunch said: ``I wouldn't even come to the office to clean out my desk.''
A funny line, which evoked laughter.
But the odds are roughly 50-50 that our colleague would go on doing what he has been doing for decades, entertaining and enlightening readers.
I base that conjecture on Paula Otto's observation of winners' behavior since the first lottery-ticket sales in September 1988.
Otto is Virginia Lottery's public-affairs director. She reports that most winners of Lotto jackpots - there have been 230 jackpots with one or more winners - respond cautiously to their good fortune.
Who we are is defined to a considerable degree by what we do, notes Otto. So most employed men and women who strike Lotto gold resolve to stick with the jobs they have.
But some who resolve to go on working where they work often don't. Why? Sometimes they quit, Otto said, because they perceive that fellow employees' attitudes toward them have changed. I infer that some co-workers resent the winners' windfalls and are quick to conclude that the appetite of the suddenly rich for wage-slaving has waned because they no longer need struggle to make ends meet.
But Otto's point is valid: Lotto winners tend to be loath to abandon everything - including jobs, workmates, friends - just because the money tree began showering them with dollars. Otto says the lottery staff is ever ready to counsel jackpot winners, and that not one winner has gone bankrupt.
Otto accompanied her boss, Virginia Lottery Director Penny W. Kyle, to a meeting with The Virginian-Pilot editorial board last week. Their mission was to talk to the editorial staff about Virginia's foray into the controversial lottery business. Turns out that 73 percent of Virginians have purchased at least one lottery ticket and that two-thirds welcome the money the lottery brings the state.
Kyle is a lively Virginian, which some might think an oxymoron, who was born in Hampton but reared in Galax. She taught at Thomas Nelson Community College on the Peninsula before enrolling in the University of Virginia law school. She practiced law at the Richmond-based firm of Maguire, Woods, Battle & Boothe and was a vice president of finance at CSX when Gov. George F. Allen offered her the lottery post three years ago.
She thinks well of the lottery - well of the way it was designed by Virginia and run by her predecessor and of the way it is running now. She speaks of the lottery as a clean enterprise that in the 1996 fiscal year contributed $332.6 million to the state's general fund (annual budget: about $22 billion). Lottery money that pours into the state's coffers is now designated for K-12 education. That isn't money in addition to what the General Assembly would appropriate - extra money would be a real boon to public education - but it is earmarked for schools and, Kyle says, Virginians approve.
Virginia Lottery sales in the 1996 fiscal year totaled $924.3 million, not quite twice the total racked up in 1990, the lottery's first full year of operation, but impressive. In addition to the $332.6 million that went to the state, $489.6 million was paid out in prizes, $49.1 million was remitted to the 6,000 retailers who sell tickets (garnering about six cents of each dollar). Seven percent of lottery revenue went for administration. Unclaimed prize money totaling $9.3 million was deposited in the state Literary Fund, which is used for low-interest construction loans to local school boards and for teacher retirements.
More than 9 percent of tickets are bought by North Carolinians, who put down their cash in Virginia stores near the state line. Three of the busiest vendors of lottery tickets are in Danville; in FY96, the trio accounted, respectively, for $4.5 million, $4.1 million and $3.5 million in sales. The fifth-busiest vendor is a Chesapeake 7-Eleven (sales: $2.9 million).
Thirty-eight states and the District of Columbia sponsor lotteries. North Carolina appears eager to tap into lottery revenue too. If it does, Virginia sales almost surely will dip.
Which suggests that Richmond should dispatch a platoon of anti-lottery lobbyists to the Raleigh statehouse to talk up lotteries' evils. A dollar diverted to a North Carolina lottery will be a dollar lost to Virginia schools. MEMO: Mr. Scott is associate editor of the editorial page of The
Virginian-Pilot.