State Update

Something to take care of before November?

So, after two top legislative leaders are turned out in a primary, a Supreme Court judge loses a retention vote and dozens of lawmakers retire rather than face the wrath of voters still smarting over a now-rescinded pay raise lawmakers ordered themselves in the middle of the night, it looks like the Pennsylvania legislature is trying to clean up its image.

Check out the Philadelphia Enquirer:

Legislators negotiating changes to Pennsylvania's gaming laws say they will soon take another crack at eliminating a controversial provision that allows public officials to own up to 1 percent of a gambling company.

"Any reform bill that we get the governor will eliminate the 1 percent ownership that is currently in the law," said Drew Crompton, chief counsel for state Senate President Pro Tem Robert Jubelirer (R., Blair). A new measure is expected to come to a vote before the legislature breaks for the summer.

The ownership provision is tied up with a larger gambling overhaul, so it could get tied up in other issues.

Speaking of gambling...

North Carolina's gearing up to launch its lottery this week. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution gives an overview on how lawmakers finally gave in to the temptation of easy money and peer pressure in voting to set up the lottery there. A sample:

Bordered by four lottery-playing states, North Carolina had been a prim wallflower until some political sleight-of-hand sneaked a bill through the statehouse in Raleigh last year.

Since then, there have been scandals, accusations of bait-and-switch with education money, a lawsuit over the lottery's legality, and a copyright infringement involving the lottery's logo. It has all played into opponents' decades-long warnings about the grubby effects of a lottery let loose across their land.

"I don't want to say, 'I told you so,' " said Republican state Sen. Fletcher Hartsell, a longtime lottery foe. "But, OK, I'll say it: 'I told you so.' "

And so on.

Meanwhile, The Associated Press concludes that the new games in North Carolina means trouble for the South Carolina lottery, because 12 percent of all sales in the South Carolina lottery are to people who live in North Carolina. Still, retailers south of the border are holding out hope:

But once the excitement of the start of the North Carolina lottery settles down, Passailaigue said more mundane concerns should keep North Carolinians crossing the state line to South Carolina, where gas and cigarettes are cheaper.

"Ninety percent of our tickets are sold at convenience stores with gas. If you live close to the border, your buying habits will typically be to buy where gasoline is cheap," Passailaigue said. "If you smoke cigarettes, you're probably going to be going to a South Carolina location."

And those customers likely will buy lottery tickets at the same convenience stores, Passailaigue said.

South Carolina also can offer richer prizes for the same ticket price, Passailaigue said. North Carolina lawmakers have mandated that 35 percent of the state's lottery revenues go to education. South Carolina allocates 28.7 percent to education.

There's a selling point.

Public service

Talk about being proactive. The (Raleigh) News and Observer reports that Gov. Mike Easley's administration started addressing a number of problems with the state's drinking water supply as soon as the paper started asking about them. In fact, sometimes the state beat the paper to the punch, by fixing problems before stories on them were published. I'm sure people in other states could only wish their administrations acted so quickly.

On the other hand, an analysis piece by The DesMoines Register concludes that its own reporting eventually doomed -- or helped doom -- video lottery machines called TouchPlay there. The newspaper asked the state for detailed financial records about the machine under the state's Freedom of Information Act. The state indicated it would comply but sent letters to machine owners all but encouraging them to try to block the release of the information.

The companies' reaction to the open-records request — and limited information the Iowa Lottery did release — was seen as a pivotal moment in the TouchPlay debate.

"A lot of legislators were just open. Very few people were making their minds up" on how to vote, said Sen. Jack Hatch, a Democrat from Des Moines. ". . . The Des Moines Register helped educate the populous, and more and more people decided they didn't want it."

Although TouchPlay representatives had argued that the machines were keeping mom-and-pop businesses afloat in Iowa towns, lottery records showed that about three dozen of the more than 80 companies that operated the machines were seeing most of the sales.

Furthermore, a company connected to the Kum & Go convenience store chain, Royal Financial, controlled about 25 percent of the machines and $62 million in sales — three times as many machines as its nearest competitor.

And so on. Just proof that journalists are doing a heckuva job out there.