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Arkansas gets a lottery Saturday, Jun 14, 2008 By John Brummett We have the pending matter for November of whether voters will approve a lottery for college scholarships. Meantime, the state Racing Commission approved a lottery this week for the enrichment of a New York company running the dog track in West Memphis. Again, let me say that I am not opposed to what amounts to casinos at Southland Racing and Gaming, owned by the Delaware North Corp. of Buffalo, N.Y., and at Oaklawn Park. People are going to gamble. They were gambling already at those locations. Both facilities are important to their regional economies. It's the charade, the hypocrisy and the emergence of the wink and nod as our official state signals - that's what galls. We pretend to be pristine, like a prostitute with a see-through, quick-release chastity belt. Because the Oaklawn horse races and Southland dog races were struggling, and because similar facilities elsewhere were diversifying into casinos to shore themselves up, our Legislature got persuaded to go along with tricking the state constitutional prohibition on casinos. It did so by passing a bill permitting these two places to open facilities that would not permit gambling, you see, but electronic games of skill. That is to say that, when playing black jack, you would confront not actual cards, but pop-up electronic images of cards. And you would not have a dealer, but a TV image of a virtual dealer. It is not to say that you would sit before a slot machine. You would sit before a lock-and-roll machine by which you would face a second step in which you would decide - by applying judgment, you see, meaning skill - whether to punch the button again to try to line up three cherries. Both facilities - racinos, they're called - are bringing in new millions. State and local governments are sharing the bounty. Southland made a bigger initial investment, being so close to Tunica and all, and hasn't yet realized the kind of profit margin of Oaklawn, which is expanding its casino. I mean racino. I mean electronic game of skill annex. So on Thursday the state Racing Commission rubber-stamped, I mean approved, a proposal by Southland to run its own lottery. They call it Keno. At a casino that owns up to what it is, they put a bunch of balls with numbers in a bubble and fluff the balls around with air, then suck 20 or so numbers into a tube. Players will previously have picked numbers. You win according to the extent to which your numbers match up with the numbers on the balls sucked into the tube. It's a lottery, in other words. So Southland asked the field audit division of the state Revenue Department for an administrative sign-off on its proposal for a Keno game. To be legal, it would display its numbers electronically rather than in some kind of airy bubble and suction tube. And to be a game of skill, you see, players would start out having the advantage of knowing what a couple of the winning numbers were. This would introduce their judgment, which is to say skill, about whether and how to proceed. The field audit people said it sounded good to them. They sent it to a New Jersey outfit that acts as a consultant, and which said it sounded good to it. The Racing Commission accepted those recommendations in perfunctory fashion, as if it had no choice, considering what the Legislature had said and what the bureaucrats and consultants had said. So here's what I'm thinking. Lt. Gov. Bill Halter should withdraw his proposed constitutional amendment for a lottery for college scholarships. He should save himself the time, trouble and money. He should get his lottery for scholarships instituted electronically and with a couple of winning numbers displayed at the get-go, and he should arrange to have the actual drawings performed for a small house fee at Southland. Who needs to bother with a constitution? ------- John Brummett is a columnist for the Arkansas News Bureau in Little Rock. His e-mail address is jbrummett@arkansasnews.com; his telephone number is (501) 374-0699. |
