So the folks who "oversee" the lottery in Arkansas have given its director a 2-percent bonus. Talk about misnomers, they call it a Merit Bonus--even though the lottery's take has fallen for two years straight. Our considered editorial opinion on the whole matter: Ho-hum.
Bishop Woosley's little bonus amounted to less than $3,000. Sure, any bonus given to the director of the Arkansas Lottery these days is a scandal, but only a minor one where the Lottery is concerned, since the whole idea of an Arkansas Lottery is a major scandal in itself.
But to hand out a bonus, even a little one, when the state's legalized numbers racket is losing traction with the usual suckers, even a little traction, is, well, unseemly to say the least. But isn't that what Public Relations is for--to make the scandalous look less scandalous?
Anyway, when have the folks running the lottery been concerned about looking good? Look at how they just tried to saddle the state with keno games--even though the Legislature clearly disapproved of the idea.
Public relations? Awareness, perception, even common sense? Who's got time for all that? There's money in them thar hills, and the Delta, too, and it's got to be extracted.
In its quest to find every dollar it can, or maybe every dime, some of the brass at the lottery, and they have a lot of it, are thinking about moving or closing some of the lottery's offices.
Lottery players, on the outside chance they win $500, can cash their tickets in with the retailers from whom they bought them. But to claim more than $500 (up to a million bucks; good luck with that), players have to go to a lottery office. There's one in Little Rock. But there are also others in Camden, Jonesboro and Springdale for bettors who don't want to make the trek to Central Arkansas. Those are the offices that could be shut down.
Innocent Reader might wonder why the Lottery can't just operate its Little Rock office. The other three process a grand total of 8.5 prize checks a day on average. Combined. That's right, eight-point-five a day. And for that, the lottery employs two people at each of those locations. Talk about inefficient. The branch offices, like the lottery itself, sound like another scam.
Except for the college scholarships that give it cover, the lottery is turning out to be little more than a jobs program for those lucky enough to get on its payroll. You have to wonder how many of those scholarships could be paid for with the money that goes to all the administrative costs that the lottery runs up through those field offices.
But rent for all three offices is less than $100,000 a year. Each one has a manager and an assistant, and their pay varies. The big problem isn't with little offices and picayune bonuses. The big problem is . . . the Arkansas Lottery itself.
The papers say the lottery's revenue dipped last year to "only" $410.6 million. Some of that money went to scholarships, and some of it to winning ticket holders. But that's still $410.6 million that the suckers turned over to the lottery so that somebody else could use the money.
That's $410.6 million that didn't go into the economy in other ways.
That's $410.6 million that didn't go to buy shoes for the kids, movie tickets, car tires, books, a night out--or to pay the light bill, the water bill, the gas bill or the doctor bill.
The lottery having played the suckers for $410.6 million last year, why get all hot-and-bothered about the less than $3,000 that Bishop Woosley pocketed? Why be upset about the relative pittance of office expenses?
Folks, there's a disease eating away at the poor and gullible in this state. (The two tend to go together.) Even if the disease isn't as aggressive as it was, it's still causing pain. No need to get outraged about a hangnail and a few sore joints. They may be a nuisance, but it's the lottery itself that's the cancer.
Editorial on 07/22/2014