A lottery of political frustration
Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley, who in his first gubernatorial campaign six years ago called gambling a detriment to society, has called a special legislative session for Aug. 15 to propose a state lottery.
It’s unlikely the governor has changed his mind or his convictions. He said in 2010 that gambling preys on those least able to afford the losses, which it does. He also said that despite his personal beliefs, he supported the right of voters to decide the matter for themselves, which he obviously still does.
What Robert Bentley is really up against, as his tenure as Alabama’s chief executive draws to an end (and if some of his legislative foes have their way, that will be sooner than officially scheduled) is a seemingly intractable reality of Alabama politics: Chronically broken things don’t get fixed.
They don’t get fixed because political demagogues keep getting elected on promises of keeping Alabama a low-tax state. It isn’t, really. But the people who bear a grossly disproportionate share of the tax burden also have a grossly microscopic share of political clout.
Don Siegelman ran for governor in 1998 with a Georgia-style education lottery as the key plank in his platform, even going so far as to have Zell Miller, the author of the lottery-funded HOPE scholarship and grant program, on hand for Siegelman’s inauguration. The lottery referendum was immediately defeated.
Bob Riley proposed a moderate increase in Alabama’s incredibly low (and for large land-owning special interests, virtually nonexistent) property taxes. It was trounced at the polls with the help of a propaganda scare campaign, funded largely by those same interests, that would have shamed Huey Long.
But those were efforts targeted specifically for education. Bentley’s lottery would help fund basic state services in a state that has, quite simply, refused to do so.
“I will not, as your governor and as a physician, watch as our most helpless and vulnerable people go without a doctor’s care,” Bentley said in an online video. “I can’t bear to think of the half-million children who, through no fault of their own, are born into poverty and have no way to get basic medical treatment they need to grow healthy and strong.”
That would be easy to dismiss as a panicked reach for moral high ground by a politician facing impeachment for tawdry sexual allegations. But Bentley has been fighting this legislature, since long before his personal scandal began, over its refusal to fund basic medical and educational and mental health and social services for the young and poor.
Make no mistake: A lottery is an absolutely terrible way for a state to fund the basic functions of government. In Alabama’s case, it essentially amounts to creating a voluntary regressive tax to supplement what is perhaps the most regressive state tax structure in the nation already.
Bentley’s is not a creative or innovative idea for helping people who, in the eyes of the state’s legislative “leadership,” clearly serve no useful political purpose. It’s just a desperate one.
This story was originally published August 1, 2016 at 5:16 PM with the headline "A lottery of political frustration."