Forget repealing the gas tax. This state has a much simpler way to put millions of dollars back into the hands of North Carolinians. At the same time, the move will help streamline state government, eliminate unnecessary government bureaucracy and prevent the siphoning off of millions to out-of-state enterprises. Furthermore, the result of this innovation will be a much more progressive distribution of the cost of paying for local school construction.
So what’s the big innovation? Eliminate the lottery.
This year, North Carolinians (and some of our lottery-frenzied neighbors who travel across the borders) will spend about $1.26 billion on the NC Education Lottery, which is predicted to show a “profit†of $385 million. That may sound like a win, but when you consider that a fair-sized chunk of the take goes to the companies that operate the games and that the money that is being returned to our local communities comes disproportionately from low- and moderate-income individuals, well, the deal doesn’t sound so swell.
Then there’s that bureaucracy, the one that recently announced another year of disappointing earnings as well as an effort to start selling the games at Wal-Mart and other big retailers. Heading up that bureaucracy is lottery director Tom Shaheen, who recently suggested that if state workers don’t like the fact that his employees were getting far higher raises than others in government, they should apply at the lottery commission. People skills, apparently, not required.