After a media report reiterated that low-income people are more likely to buy lottery tickets than the well-heeled, lawmakers are suddenly concerned that the state may be unfairly targeting the poor with lottery games and advertisements.
The Legislature’s Government Oversight Committee voted unanimously last week to study the effect of the lottery, especially on the state’s poor residents.
They are much too late to this debate. As Gov. Paul LePage said on a WVOM radio program Tuesday, the answer isn’t more oversight or regulations when the problem is with the lottery itself.
“Everybody who is poor looks for the silver bullet to get out of poverty,” he said. “I’m just telling you it is human nature. I did it when I was coming up.”
Draw games and scratch tickets appeal to this instinct with names like “ Lucky for Life” and “ Escape to Margaritaville.”
“There is no oversight that they can provide” that will stop “poor people [from] trying to win the lottery,” he added.
“Regulations, regulations, regulations isn’t the answer. Either you do it or you don’t,” he said of the state having a lottery.
This isn’t a new debate. Concerns about its effect on the poor were raised during legislative debate in 1973 when lawmakers considered starting a lottery in Maine.
“I think that it is an unwise move on the part of the state of Maine to try to attract people who cannot afford these tickets to spend money that they should be spending on their own families and the welfare of their families. And I feel that this is what would happen,” then-Rep. David Emery, a Republican from Rockland, warned his colleagues.
Rep. Roosevelt Susi, R-Pittsfield, called the lottery “a trap for the economically unsophisticated.”
The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Arthur Genest, a Democrat from Waterville, dismissed such concerns as “the same old argument.” He instead focused on the revenue the lottery would raise.
“It is not only a good way of raising revenue, it has become acceptable by all the people,” Genest said in May 1973.
His bill easily passed the House, but it passed by only three votes in the Senate. It was then put to a referendum vote. Sixty-three percent of voters cast ballots in favor of the lottery, and it launched in 1974.
Forty years later, Maine’s poorest towns spend as much as 200 times more per person than those in wealthier areas, according to a study by Cornell University, which was commissioned by the Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting.
Another finding was that for every 1 percentage point increase in joblessness in a given ZIP code, sales of scratch and draw tickets rose 10 percent.
The Waite General Store in remote northeastern Washington County, the state’s poorest county, sells more lottery tickets per capita than any other establishment in Maine. In 2014, the store sold $1,313 worth of lottery tickets for every town resident. In Kennebunkport, per capita lottery sales that year totalled $6.
The Government Oversight Committee’s job is a difficult one.
Evidence that lotteries get most of their money from the poor is plentiful. The biggest problem for the committee is the state’s addiction to lottery revenues. The lottery brings about $50 million into state coffers every year. That money isn’t earmarked for a special purpose, but its loss would leave a significant hole in the state’s budget. To compensate, lawmakers would have to raise taxes, cut spending, or both.
The Government Oversight Committee’s lottery probe gives lawmakers the chance to act on their concern for the poor and start the hard work of balancing the state budget without lottery money.
