Many people in Illinois can recall the day in 1984 when a working-class guy named Mike Wittkowski turned up as the single winner of a $40 million Lotto jackpot.
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For a culture that thrives on the lure of the quick score, few things seem as pure and easy as plunking down $1 for a shot at winning millions against nearly impossible odds. That notion has been reinforced dramatically this week as the multistate Powerball jackpot has soared to $175 million for a single winner in Wednesday night’s drawing.
Most state lotteries were sold to voters on the premise that the money would provide badly needed funding for education. Other gaming outlets such as riverboat casinos and racetracks were depicted as ready sources of tax revenue and engines of economic development for cash-strapped governments and communities.
Now, as a federal commission convenes in Chicago on Wednesday, gambling is being described as the single largest recipient of the national entertainment dollar. As the industry has flourished nationwide, it has become a honey pot for political campaign donations and could supplant the tobacco industry as a lobbying power in Washington.
But as legal gambling has spread, so too have concerns about its social and economic impact, raising the question of whether the gaming industry should be subject to scrutiny in the same way that the tobacco industry has been.
The National Gambling Impact Study Commission, established in 1996, is charged with trying to determine whether the promised benefits from gaming have been realized, and to assess the attendant social and financial costs.
It also is examining how gambling is advertised and promoted, focusing on whether lower-income groups are targeted, and how new technologies such as the Internet function as gambling outlets.
Several area officials are scheduled to testify during the commission’s two-day Chicago meeting, including Elgin Mayor Kevin Kelly and Scott King, mayor of Gary, Ind.
The commission is packed on one side with opponents of gambling, such as James Dobson, president of Focus on the Family, a Christian media ministry. But the panel also includes gambling executives such as Terrence Lanni, chairman of the casino giant MGM Grand Inc.
Though their differences on gambling appear irreconcilable, commission members are expected to produce a report for President Clinton and Congress by June 1999.
Dobson’s views on gambling are rarely hidden. At the recent National Day of Prayer held in Washington, he labeled gambling as a potent marker of the nation’s moral decline.
“When I was a kid, people understood that gambling was dangerous,” Dobson said. Now, he said, it is marketed almost as a “patriotic duty.”
In an interview later, he said: “Many, many leaders of the House and Senate are taking huge contributions from gambling. . . . It’s a major concern to me because knowing how the system works, those who give big dollars get access and a lot of times get their way.”
In this election cycle, the gaming industry has made more than $1 million in “soft-money” contributions to the Republican and Democratic parties, according to the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics.
Frank Fahrenkopf Jr., president of the American Gaming Association, says critics for years have tried to make the argument that gambling is morally wrong. But he added that when Americans objected to that assertion, opponents “shifted their focus” to economic and social costs.
Fahrenkopf said studies conducted by the gaming association and other, more independent institutions show that critics are exaggerating the social costs of gambling and that the activity provides direct economic benefits to communities.
But, he cautioned, “gambling is not some sort of economic bullet that’s going to solve the economic problems of a community. It’s got to be made part of a carefully thought out economic development plan.”
State-sanctioned lotteries are by far the most prevalent form of gambling in the U.S., and a majority of adults play the games in the 37 states that have them. According to the commission, lotteries also rank first in gross revenues, with sales of $42.9 billion in 1996 compared to $4 billion in 1982. Lotteries also are the top source of gambling revenues for governments, netting $13.8 billion in 1996, the commission said.
In Illinois, casino money has flowed into state and local governments. Riverboat casinos in Illinois deposited $183.2 million in state taxes last year and $78 million to the communities where the boats are based.
Those totals have dropped for the past two years, but in December the state imposed a graduated riverboat tax package that is expected to generate about $57 million more in state revenue this year.
The boats remain controversial. Established officially in 1990 as a way to attract tourists and spur economic development in downtrodden river towns, the floating casinos have failed to deliver on one of those promises–tourism. Studies indicate the vast majority of patrons at the boats generally drive from only 30 to 50 miles away.
The boats have provided jobs, however. According to statistics from the Coalition of Midwestern Riverboats, boats employ nearly 11,000 people in Illinois and a total of 29,000 in Iowa, Indiana and Missouri.
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