No matter what proponents call it — an education lottery, a game, a voluntary contribution to the schools — it’s really just another tax.
Legislators have to approve a budget by June 30 or they risk losing the benefit of having already voted to extend $384 million worth of taxes scheduled to expire on July 1. News reports say that the legislature will approve a barebones budget, then seek to pass a lottery later to allow for more spending.
If a lottery is to pass, it must first do so in the House. That’s where the lottery died last year in a lopsided vote. The pressure on the budget is supposedly increasing support for a lottery, and House leaders hint that they are within a handful of votes of approving a lottery referendum. The Senate is thought to have enough votes to pass such a bill.
Lottery supporters will roll out a laundry list of arguments for the lottery, and they will call it everything but what it really is — another tax increase.
They’ll say that it is for education, that the state is losing money to Virginia and South Carolina and that a lottery is a voluntary way for citizens to fill the state treasury.
But the history of lotteries in this country shows that they are not about education. They are about general state spending. Lottery money flows into state treasuries and gets mixed up with all other revenues. One state after another has said it would dedicate lottery money to new school spending and one state after another has broken that promise. Most simply reduce other spending for education to neutralize the effect of the new lottery money. Some states have actually cut education spending.
Look at North Carolina’s own history with compromises and commitments. In the past 20 years, all kinds of legislative promises have been made regarding highway funds, inventory tax rebates, sales taxes on cars, intangibles taxes, corporate income taxes and school construction, etc. Once the pols who made the promises leave office, someone else arrives and decides to use the money differently.
But you don’t have to look too deeply into history to see why a lottery is gaining votes this year. Just look back a few weeks — to the first signs that the budgets passed in April were based on overly optimistic revenue estimates.
That’s created a search for new revenue for the entire budget, not just the education budget.
The search has included new taxes on beer, wine and cigarettes, and no one has said that those are only for education. In fact, supporters have most often rationalized those tax increases on the need to spare social programs.
Paul O’Connor is a Raleigh columnist for the Capitol Press Association, an editorial writer for The Winston-Salem Journal and a teacher of journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. Contact him at ocolumn@mindspring.com.
