A bad bet: State funds from sin

A bad bet: State funds from sin
Lawmakers in Olympia have been jonesing for money lately. So this spring they have come up with three big schemes for how to raise some fresh cash. The three ideas are: drugs, booze and gambling. Kind of gives new meaning to the phrase "the wages of sin."
Danny Westneat
Seattle Times staff columnist

"Are you guys trying to be the new Sin City or something?"

On the line from Vegas is Billy Gamble, aka William Thompson, aka the Scholar of Sin. He teaches for the University of Nevada-Las Vegas, and he writes on such topics as vice, gaming and how economics is trumping values in politics these days.

So I figured he'd be perfect to ask about our state Legislature.

Lawmakers in Olympia have been jonesing for money lately. So this spring they have come up with three big schemes for how to raise some fresh cash.

The three ideas are: drugs, booze and gambling.

Kind of gives new meaning to the phrase "the wages of sin."

There's the proposal to legalize pot and sell it from the state liquor stores. There's the idea to open the state to private liquor sales. And last week, lawmakers from both parties introduced a bill to bring into the state as many as 8,000 slot machines.

All feature the lure of hundreds of millions of dollars in new revenue for a state budget that needs a fix.

And if that doesn't work, might as well have some fun, right?

What does it say about our Legislature that this is what they've come up with, I asked Thompson.

"That they're desperate?" he joked.

Seriously, this is how it's going all over, he says. Politicians in countless states are being cut off by the feds and feel they have exhausted all other sources of money — politically acceptable ones, anyway. There's a sense that general taxes can't be raised and too-deep spending cuts may hurt the state, so politicians feel as hemmed in as a gambler on a losing streak.

"The economic equation is overwhelming," Thompson says. "So they're casting about, and the standard objections against the sins are being set aside because of the sheer need for money."

Or at least the chimera of money. I favor legalizing pot — mostly because it's such a waste of public resources keeping it illegal — but the idea of installing the state as the approved dope dealer is a huge stretch in the other direction.

"Legalize pot for the personal freedom, not for the money," Thompson says (and I agree).

Likewise, bringing slot machines into the state might help some cardrooms keep pace with the big Indian casinos (which don't pay state taxes). But it might not do all that much for the state, Thompson says.

The state's take of the slots likely would be shifted from other parts of the local economy, not from the Indian casinos, he says. The retiree playing the slots on Aurora twice a week is more likely to have spent that money at Wal-Mart, is how Thompson put it. It's different in Vegas, where gambling draws out-of-state or even international tourists.

"You'd mostly be hitting up your own seniors, your unemployed, the people with welfare checks, in order to balance the budget," he said.

Plus, once states go all in with a sin, they tend to become pushers of it.

"You have to promote the sin once you start taxing it," he said. "It will be 'save a school, play a slot machine.' "

In fact, the slot-machine bill, House Bill 2044, does earmark 50 percent of the slots revenues to K-12 education.

Is this what we're reduced to? People toking, drinking and gambling are fine, as far as I'm concerned. And I don't blame the politicians for getting creative — they are desperate, after all. But there's got to be a more dependable, broad-based way to pay for the government we want. Counting on sin to prop up schools or health care is just another way of chasing a bad bet.

Speaking of which, guess which state is the most in the hole financially out of all 50? With a deficit, measured as a percentage of the yearly budget, that is more than twice as large as ours?

Nevada.