DATE: Monday, June 9, 1997                  TAG: 9706040002

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B10  EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: OPINION 

SOURCE: BY BILL and JOANNE HUTSON 

                                            LENGTH:   85 lines

LOTTERY WILL LET GOVERNMENT GROW UNCHECKED

With the predictability of spring, lotteries are again under consideration by North Carolina lawmakers as an additional way to finance state government programs. Many arguments have been made against the lottery, including religious, moral and socioeconomic ones. Another objection, rarely if ever raised, concerns the philosophical and democratic consequences of state-run lotteries.

On the surface, a lottery seems like a win-win-win proposition for the taxpayers, the legislators and the beneficiaries of the government programs funded through the lottery. The people of the state, it is argued, won't face a tax hike to pay for the programs; the legislators won't face their constituents to ask for a tax hike; and the beneficiaries of the lottery-supported programs (often teachers, administrators and lobbyists) will face less uncertainty regarding the funding of their programs.

The irresistible promise is, of course, that they can enjoy a long and steady stream of funding without facing recurring fiscal battles to justify their program to the people of the state or to the legislature. And if these arguments were not strong enough, many proponents argue that, at worst, the lottery is a mere voluntary tax. No one is, after all, forced to play. Surely such a free choice is better than a compulsory tax, supporters argue.

But these arguments for the lottery are more powerful when used against it. Although there is mounting evidence among states that have instituted lotteries that the actual financial return to the state is far less than initially predicted, and while there are other indications that the lottery disproportionately preys on the less-well-off, a more central problem is that the lottery allows government services to operate and even to grow without recurring approval or direct support from the people. Lotteries also hide from citizens the true cost of government.

Politicians and public administrators try to spread the burden of their livelihoods not only as widely as possible, but also, as in the case of the lottery, as imperceptibly as possible. For agents and dependents of the state, far better it is to have their favorite programs supported by the ``easy-to-forget, hard-to-trace'' taxes such as sales taxes, excise taxes, fees, property taxes and so forth.

Adding a voluntary tax like the lottery only spreads the cost of government more widely and more indirectly. It is hard to imagine a better method than the lottery to secure funding while minimizing the risk of being directly accountable for how the money is spent.

The lottery meets every politician's and administrator's test for safe funding. Moreover, lotteries don't reduce the burden of the state on the people as it is sometimes argued; they only make the true and total cost much harder to trace, measure and control.

Financial support for programs such as public education should not be removed, as it were, from the rough and tumble of full democratic and legislative review. It is only through such processes that the will of the people is sensed and attended to. Our annual support of the government (i.e., our taxes) should never be further decoupled from our annual approval of the growth and direction of the government (i.e., our vote).

Decoupling our financial support from our votes allows the government to sustain itself in part without the direct and recurring approval of the people. Weakening the tie between our votes and the power of the government to run or grow results in a government that is less interested in our votes and, by implication, less democratic.

It may seem foolish to some, but we should want to pay the government explicitly for the programs that we charge it to create and operate. We shouldn't shirk that responsibility by turning to a lottery to pay for the programs we supposedly want. We should jealously guard the control and responsibility that come with paying our taxes. With a lottery, some of the tough decisions will be painlessly ``removed'' from the political process. And the voluntary taxpayer (in this case the lottery player) will have no say over how the funds are spent.

There are at least two sure ways to test the motives of lottery advocates: (1) tie the lottery to a proportionate tax cut or (2) force the lottery to be regularly approved by the voters. The former method will reveal to the citizens what the lottery really is - a tax increase, another way for the government to grow in size and scope. It will shine a much-needed bright light of honesty onto the real intentions and longer-term consequences of a state-run lottery.

The second method will have the effect of reuniting the voters with their wallets. It will remind voters that part of their government is operating without their tax dollars and largely without their ability to control it. MEMO: Bill Hutson is an ergonomist and software developer. JoAnne Hutson

is a Montessori teacher. This column was distributed by the John Locke

Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan public-policy think tank in

Raleigh, N.C.

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