Governor Daniels is again touting his proposed plan to privatize the lottery. With FSSA, the 80/90 toll road, and New Castle’s private prison as a backdrop, privatizing the lottery looks like a good deal. Yes, they are failing us as typical privatization efforts ultimately do. But compared to these follies, the selling off the lottery would be a rather benign move. See, I’m not that intolerant to public-private collaboration!
His proposed deal makes some financial sense. The term of the privatization deal is relatively reasonable at 30 years. The state gets $2 billion up front and an additional $200 million a year. Given that the lottery has only topped $200 million in money sent to state coffers 3 times since 1998, I say that doesn’t sound too bad.
He’s not privatizing a critical service that everyone must rely on. The voluntary poor tax, errr, lottery could fail miserably or they could make a little money off of it, I don’t see the harm. Half of the lottery is already privatized. So what when scandal hits and we find rampant corruption and cheating. The lottery loses credibility and people continue to stop playing. All in all, not a bad deal.
The only case against privatizing a lottery I could find came from our neighbors to the west. Saul Levmore, The University of Chicago’s Law School Dean states that the major downfall to privatization is that the lottery would be ensured existence for the duration of the deal. Fair enough. He elaborates on his case for not privatizing the lottery by stating any privatization efforts limit the options of future leaders. Fair enough, but I can say with relative confidence that public or private, this state has a taste for gambling.
What it boils down to is that greedy Mitch Daniels wants to come out of his term as governor looking smart fiscally, at the expense of everyone that follows him. Oh well, let this vain little project go through. Just so the money he is pledging for higher education actually reaches those he claims a desire to help.
