Sides vie for lotto control

Residents await gaming as Hodges, lobbyists, lawmakers draft bills to shape its format

Web posted Monday, February 12, 2001

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By Margaret N. O'Shea
South Carolina Bureau

It lacks the drama and passion of last year's flag fight and the moral outrage of the debate over video poker.

But the battle over control of South Carolina's lottery has begun in the state Legislature, and early skirmishes suggest it won't be easily won by either side.

At issue is what voters really wanted last fall when they called for a change in the state's constitution, which says lotteries are illegal. South Carolina still can't have a lottery until the House and Senate agree to carry out the voters' wishes, and some lawmakers won't do that until they know how the lottery will operate and where the money will go.

Democratic Gov. Jim Hodges, who got elected on a lottery platform, says that a ``yes'' vote in the referendum was a vote of confidence for him and an endorsement of his plan, which would give him power to name a lottery board and oversee its operations.

That's just one detail in the governor's plan that faces adamant opposition, but it's a big one. Also, with the Statehouse churning with lobbyists for professional lottery corporations who want to operate South Carolina's, Mr. Hodges wants to let one of them ``run it like a business.''

Those who tried to keep the lottery referendum from passing have turned their efforts toward crafting a lottery bill that is drastically different from the governor's and would include limits on his power and exclusion of corporations. They want the Legislature to share power over the lottery board and lottery operations. They say the corporations siphon off too much money and introduce gimmicks to keep players interested. Some states offer lottery casinos with video gambling machines similar to the ones South Carolina banned.

Columbia attorney Ken Wingate, a key player in No Lottery 2000 last year, said there's a reason video poker parlors across the state haven't been turned into something else yet, but are sitting empty.

``The operators have their machines stashed in warehouses in Atlanta and Augusta and Charlotte just waiting on the South Carolina lottery to start. They think it will bring back video poker.''

Mr. Wingate now heads the Lottery Accountability Board, a residents group that evolved from No Lottery 2000. Its members are now trying to shape the law that will determine how it's run.

Mr. Wingate said the governor's bills contain a loophole that could allow video gambling again.

Kevin Geddings, who headed the Education Lottery Campaign, says focus group research in 80 House districts across the state before the November election showed support for an approach that is now detailed in identical bills in the House and Senate, where they're called ``the Hodges bills.''

He says people want a professionally run lottery, not one run by the state that would lumber along as the Department of Motor Vehicles does. The focus groups also supported using lottery proceeds for scholarships, higher education, free technical education and technology in the lower grades.

He called a poll suggesting voters disagreed with nearly every Hodges detail ``a garbage poll'' and ``fiction.'' The Lottery Accountability Board poll, conducted by Market Research Institute of Pensacola, Fla., covered 600 people who said they voted in the November election, and their responses on test questions did correspond with percentages in the presidential race.

The polling company said there was a 4 percent margin of error. Eighty-three percent favored a lottery commission named jointly by the governor and the General Assembly, 71 percent preferred a state-run lottery, 85 percent wanted proceeds spread from lower grades up, 84 percent wanted limits on advertising, and 76 percent wanted video gambling machines excluded.

The Lottery Accountability Board is drafting a bill incorporating those features and others it says would ensure a squeaky-clean lottery, including a provision that gambling corporations could not make political contributions. The governor's bills would allow them to contribute to political parties, which don't have to report the monetary gifts.

There has been no rush on the bills because, Speaker David Wilkins has said, the House won't consider lottery legislation until it's done with the state budget. Facing a half-billion-dollar shortfall and certain cutbacks, he said he didn't want the two issues to influence each other. But in the Senate, a bill to counter Mr. Hodges' hit the desks last week with Aiken Republican Sen. Greg Ryberg a co-sponsor. It incorporates many of the features that the Lottery Accountability Board is promoting but did not have the group's input.

In fact, it took the board's members by surprise. Mr. Geddings said the counter legislation is a thinly disguised attempt to undermine the success of a lottery. With the Senate heading full tilt into lottery debate and the House lagging, the battle could consume most of the session. Mr. Hodges had hoped for early ratification of enabling legislation so the lottery could be up and running quickly.

Reach Margaret N. O'Shea at (803) 279-6895.

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