Director offers a too-careful compromise on video poker
S o, the Oregon State Lottery director is not a gambler. Brenda Rocklin has decided not to call the bluff of lottery retailers who warned that everybody -- including the state -- would lose if Oregon cuts very deeply into their share of video poker profits.
Instead, Rocklin has recommended that the Oregon State Lottery Commission today adopt a new set of lottery contracts that would shift about $80 million in video poker profits from bars and taverns to public services over the next four years. The commission will meet at 9 a.m. at the lottery's Salem office.
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Rocklin's proposal is a careful and creative plan -- it gives retailers two new contract options over the next four years -- but not the bold change in lottery policy we think is justified. It's even a step back from an earlier recommendation that the lottery staff erroneously claimed would shift as much as $250 million from retailers to the state.
If adopted by the commission, the new contracts would allow bars and taverns to keep an estimated combined share of 28 percent to 29 percent of total video poker profits. The current contract allows the retailers to keep about 32 percent.
It's tempting to demand more -- more for the state, more for the schools and Oregon's other terribly strapped public services. Surveys of other comparable lottery jurisdictions have found that some give retailers only 15 percent to 25 percent of video profits.
Yet it seems clear that this is as far as Rocklin and the Lottery Commission are now willing to go to fix what has been a giveaway of public money to the state's bars and taverns.
If Rocklin had wanted to roll the dice, much of the evidence on the record -- economic studies and comparisons with other lottery jurisdictions -- would have supported a more dramatic shift in video poker profits. So would we.
Source: The Oregonian
