Jac VerSteeg: Beware state’s MegaNanny game

If Republicans Sen. Tom Lee of Brandon and Rep. Frank Artiles of Miami get their way, the Florida Lottery’s newest scratch-off game could be called MegaNanny.

The two lawmakers have proposed legislation that would force the lottery to reduce the number and price of popular scratch-off games.

Scratch-off tickets, The Palm Beach Post reports, generated $3.7 billion last year, up from $3.4 billion the previous year. There’s outrage in some quarters, though, directed at the assertion the scratch-offs are too adept at emptying the pockets of poor people and are a scourge of low-income neighborhoods.

In an article that appeared on Context Florida, Paul Seago, executive director of Nocasinos.org, praised Lee and Artiles, whose legislation – Senate Bill 790  and House Bill 607 – would cap the number of scratch-off games and eliminate $10, $20 and $25 tickets, making $5 the top price for a scratch-off ticket. And he blasted legislation proposed by Republicans Sen. Garrett Richter of Naples and Rep. Holly Raschein of Key Largo, that would “allow players to gamble using their credit cards.”

The credit-card legislation – Senate Bill 402 and House Bill 415 – received initial favorable committee votes mid-month.

Mr. Seago contends that, “State sponsorship of a form of gambling that disproportionately affects the poor is bad enough, to allow poor people to finance their addiction at 22 to 28 percent interest is deplorable.”

Well, interest rates that high are deplorable under any conditions. If you want to make a moral argument, make it against allowing credit card companies to charge that much (and good luck). If such rates are allowed, the state should not be making micro-moral judgments about which legal goods and services can be bought on credit.

As far as the scratch-off legislation goes, I have my doubts about whether lowering maximum ticket prices would affect how much players risk. If I intend to spend $20, I’m going to do so whether it’s on one $20 or two $10 tickets or – if $5 tickets are the maximum available – on four of those.

Reducing the number of scratch-off games, and therefore the number of available tickets, could reduce scratch-off sales. But then the players simply could switch to Lotto-type games rather than scratch-off.

But I also have my doubts whether the state – having determined that it is ethical to run a lottery – has any business trying to tell low-income people that they can’t spend their own money on lottery tickets – or on anything else for that matter.

The state does forbid Floridians who receive food assistance from using their EBT Cards on alcohol, lottery tickets, slot machines, casino gambling or adult entertainment. That is appropriate. The public has an interest in guaranteeing that public assistance is spent appropriately.

But if a fast-food worker wants to spend her own money on Bud Light, a pack of Marlboros and a $20 “Lucky $200,000 A Year For Life” scratch-off ticket, then the nannies in the Legislature have no business intervening.
Lottery games disproportionately targets the poor? So does the regressive sales tax. I detect no rush to amend the state constitution to replace that with an income tax.

There’s another issue. What if the proposed legislation does succeed in crippling the scratch-off business – meaning it reduces income not just from the poor but also from more well-to-do players who easily can afford it? If that happens, lottery proceeds are reduced, and so is the lottery’s contribution to education.
How does that help the poor?

It’s not certain MegaNanny would work at all. At best, it would reduce gambling by the poor but at the expense of money for education. At best, it would be a win-lose. The odds it would be a win-win? Zero.

Jac Wilder VerSteeg is a columnist for The South Florida Sun Sentinel, former deputy editorial page editor for The Palm Beach Post and former editor of Context Florida. Column courtesy of Context Florida.