KGOU Election Series; 705-6 Lottery

Each day this week, the KGOU News Department will present in-depth reports on several of the initiatives on the November 2nd ballot. We start our series today with a look at State Question 705 and 706, which would create a state lottery and amend the Oklahoma Constitution to create an Education Trust Fund. While not officially taking a position, State Finance Director Scott Meacham says the initiative makes economic sense. Well, the primary benefit of the lottery is that it will generate, assuming we do close to what Texas has done with their lottery, around $150 million a year for education. 45% of the proceeds are dedicated to common education and early childhood education with other 45% going to higher ed and career tech. Meacham says that state legislators have taken special precautions to ensure that revenue from the lottery will remain dedicated to funding education. In certain other states where they had sold the lottery as an education lottery, all the

proceeds in fact didn't go to education and the governor was very concerned about that. So we created the second state question, 706. The first one is sort of just the mechanics of the lottery, 705 deals with how the lottery would work and operate, creates the lottery commission that would oversee and all that. 706 is sort of the constitutional lock box, and it creates a mechanism to oversee ensuring that the legislature doesn't take any money out of the back door and that that money does in fact go to education. These assurances are not enough for lottery opponents like state representative Forest Clunch. They're selling the lottery on the idea that you can't divert the money. Well, that's not true. The quote, lock box, 706 has no lock and even if it did, every legislator has given a key to it. Here's why. The constitutional provision that they say mandates that the money go to education does not at all.

What it says is that we hereby create an education lottery trust fund and all monies that go into the education lottery trust fund will be used for educational purposes and hence outlined in the lottery bill. The problem is simple. The legislature can change the lottery every year. It's simple statute. So all they have to do is change one sentence to say 50% of the money will go into the lottery trust fund and 50% of the money will go into the general fund. They can do anything they want to and you cannot constrain them. The state finance office responds that such an action would be legally questionable. But ultimately, Clunch says that even if the lock box could be guaranteed, the lottery presents Oklahoma voters with a moral dilemma. Ronald Reagan, when he was governor of California, they were considering a lottery and here was his words. We ought to build the state on the strength of the people, not on their weaknesses and that's what gambling is for many people. Forest Clunch's group, Oklahoma's for good government, has created a series of ads opposing the lottery and tribal gaming.

Gaming money isn't easy, losing money is crime, bankruptcies and a force will increase. Destroying Oklahoma families. But Scott Meacham says that gambling has existed in the state in other forms for years and he downplays the ethical arguments against the lottery. Is it in fact immoral to purchase a lottery ticket with maybe the hopes of winning your private island in the Bahamas or if you lose the money going to education? I disagree that that is in fact immoral. This is not the first time a state lottery has been on the ballot and all sides seem to agree that if question 705 and 706 failed to pass, they'll likely reappear in future elections. I'm KGOU News Director Scott Gurian.