It would hardly seem logical that the notion of a lottery would be controversial in a state long synonymous with gambling.
Yet hearings were held last week in the Nevada Legislature on a proposed move to eliminate a 140-year-old ban on lotteries in the Nevada Constitution. This in a state where $10.6 billion was lost to casinos in 2004.
With so much at stake, advocates and opponents of the idea are lining up for the fight. Proponents insist a lottery would provide a stable revenue stream for an educational system that flounders at the bottom of the national average in funding and performance. For their part, those against the idea cite studies that indicate it would unfairly burden the poor and create a host of social problems.
This being Nevada, there are added dimensions to the debate. For decades, it has been a canard here that it would be inappropriate for the state to run a gambling operation that would, in effect, compete with its largest industry, employer, and taxpayer.
''It would be like the state of Washington going into the airplane business or the state of Michigan going into the automobile industry," said Lesley Pittman, a spokeswoman for Station Casinos Inc., which owns 10 casinos in outlying areas of Las Vegas that cater to residents. ''For the most part, our customers have a set budget for gambling. Any money they take out of that budget . . . that's money out of our facility."
That notion is changing as gambling has proliferated across the nation and many casino operators experience success in states that also have lotteries. In fact, the most profitable lottery store in North America is just about 50 miles southwest of Las Vegas in the border town of Nipton, Calif., and is owned by MGM Mirage, the world's largest gaming company and owner of nine major resorts on the Las Vegas Strip.
What's more, the nation's most successful state lottery is in Massachusetts, where $682 is spent per year per capita on lotteries, even though the world's largest casino, Foxwoods, is 45 miles south of the border in Connecticut.
''In the past, I've been less enthusiastic about this because I didn't think the state should be in competition with its primary industry, but most of the companies doing business here now are doing it in other states where there is a lottery," said Assembly Speaker Richard Perkins, a Democrat who introduced the lottery bill last week. ''I don't think it's controversial here. This is supported by 75 percent of citizens, according to polling we've done."
Even so, many legislators are cool to the idea and even if the pitch does not fall flat, it will be years before there will be scratch tickets on the Strip. The constitutional amendment must first make it out of the Legislature twice in two successive sessions before it is subject to a vote of the people in order to become law. Since the Nevada Legislature only meets every other year, the earliest it could be on a statewide ballot would be 2008, so there could not be a lottery until at least 2009.
All that could be avoided if the Nevada Gaming Control Board rules that entering a multistate lottery somehow does not violate the constitutional prohibition.
State Senator Dina Titus, the minority leader and a Las Vegas Democrat, has asked for that ruling and realizes it is a longshot but noted that the state allows keno in casinos, and that ''is pretty much the same thing as a lottery where you're picking numbers the same way." And, advocates note, the gambling industry's existence rests partly upon a tortured 1919 attorney general's opinion that slot machines do not constitute a form of a lottery.
Titus and Perkins view a lottery as a way of creating a stable revenue source in a state in which more than half the government's funds come from gambling and tourism-related taxes. That has led to wide fluctuations in revenues depending on economic conditions, with the 2003 Legislature struggling after the economic downturn induced by the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the current Legislature awash in money, thanks to a record biennium for gaming and tourism industries.
Unlike Station Casinos, MGM Mirage is not threatened by a lottery, but spokesman Alan Feldman questions whether it is smart to create another revenue stream based on gambling.
Clearly, there is public demand for a lottery in Nevada. About three-fourths of the tickets sold at the Nipton store are to Nevada residents, store manager Carol Maisenbach estimated.
''I drive down here every week," said Tom Sadan, a 79-year-old
Las Vegas retiree who bought $20 in tickets at the Nipton store
on Monday. ''I just do it for the fun. I've got nothing else
to do. I would definitely play a Nevada lottery if they got
a pretty good jackpot."
