Maine residents receiving government help to pay for groceries, life necessities and health care took home at least $22.4 million in state lottery winnings between 2010 and 2014. Almost a quarter of those who won a prize of $1,000 or more in that time were receiving some form of public assistance.
The data point, revealed last week by the Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting, should be a surprise to no one. After all, the Center’s reporting in October highlighted the reality that per-capita lottery spending in Maine’s poorest towns — largely in Washington County — was 200 times the per-capita spending on lottery tickets in the state’s wealthiest areas.
In other words, some of Maine’s poorest residents are purchasing lottery tickets they can’t afford. In the process, they’re fueling a multimillion-dollar, state-run business that’s become especially adept at marketing the false promise of prosperity through scratch tickets to people who could use a little bit of good fortune in their lives.
While those people might have won $22 million over four years, including eight jackpot prizes of at least $500,000, they spent many times that amount to win comparatively so little. Given the long odds of winning the lottery, an economist interviewed by the Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting estimated the sum at hundreds of millions of dollars.
The response from state policymakers to the revelations on lottery winnings was swift. Sen. Justin Alfond of Portland, the Senate Democratic leader, introduced legislation the day the article was published. Republican leaders have long supported the same concept.
But the solution proposed by Alfond and supported by Gov. Paul LePage and other Republicans — a prohibition on using public benefits to purchase lottery tickets — is the exact wrong one to the problem at hand.
Lawmakers from both parties have previously proposed legislation that prohibits recipients of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, which provides a limited amount of cash assistance to families with very low incomes, from using their benefits on a long list of taboo purchases, including lottery tickets. There’s good reason those proposals haven’t passed: The prohibitions are nearly impossible to efficiently enforce. Plus, debating them turns attention away from where policymakers should be focused: on public policies that help low-income people beat poverty.
In the case of the lottery, it’s clear where the problem is — and it’s not with the prospect of participants in one of the stingiest public assistance programs spending a little bit of state-supplied cash on lottery tickets.
The problem is with the lottery itself.
The lottery is a business, and the state has run it as such. Since 2003, according to the Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting, the state has tripled the amount it spends on lottery advertising. It’s also become more savvy about its marketing strategy, particularly at targeting those people most likely to play. As the Center’s review of lottery spending data shows, those most likely to play are those least likely to be able to afford to play.
That’s the challenge inherent in a state-run business. What helps the state’s bottom line sometimes harms its people.
Maine lawmakers have a responsibility to consider the real problems connected to the lottery. When they do that, the solutions should be obvious: The state should either dial back its marketing of the lottery, or it should exit the lottery business altogether.
Of course, the lottery brings about $50 million into state coffers every year that helps the state pay for schools, health care for the poor, services for those in need and other state government functions. (The state doesn’t earmark lottery revenue for any specific purpose.) The absence of a state lottery or the reality of a less successful one would undoubtedly translate into a budget challenge.
But Maine, like other states, has grown dependent on a successful lottery. When it comes to the consequences, it’s been too easy for policymakers to turn the other way.
