The Northern Light

Issue date: 9/11/06 Section: Opinion

When police declare that vice crimes are getting higher priority in Anchorage, we expect results.

So it was good news to learn that after conducting a year-long investigation, complete with undercover agents, city and federal officials finally busted up an illegal gambling house in Midtown last month, making it the third such establishment broken up this year.

Except now we're wondering why, at the end of such an intense investigation, not a single person was arrested at the scene.

Maybe it's because police have decided to go after the criminals that actually need to be off the streets.

After all, who hasn't placed a small wager at some point?

People are captivated by the enticement of getting rich quick, or at the very least making an easy buck.

The existence of these illegal gambling havens only shows that some people are going to gamble whether it is legal or not.

So why not capitalize on it?

Thirty-nine other states do, along with Washington, D.C.

More than three-quarters of U.S. states have a state-operated lottery, from which the proceeds go to fattening up their budgets.

In New Jersey, for example, the state raked in an astounding $2.3 billion in fiscal year 2005 from its lottery - becoming the state's fourth-largest revenue workhorse, according to the New Jersey Lottery.

After paying operating costs, $812 million of that made its way back into the state's operating budget, including $95 million for the Department of Education and $509 million for higher education.

Similarly, the California Lottery designates 34.1 cents from every dollar the lottery generates to be spent toward education. In California, that equates to $1 billion in lottery revenue spent on education in 2005, including higher education.

Despite the fact that a lottery could be a revenue-generating behemoth for Alaska, there are some valid arguments against having one: that it is a disproportional tax on the poor, who are more likely to play it than the rich; and that it could breed gambling addiction and crime.

Sure, some people are going to develop gambling addictions - if they haven't already nursed that vice online. But with the amount of money generated by a lottery, Alaska could afford any necessary treatment programs and extra law enforcement while still having plenty of money left to go around.

And the bottom line is that adults need to take responsibility for their own actions and stop looking for someone else to blame.

It is true that Alaska's population can't compare to those of New Jersey or California, and neither would the revenue generated from gambling here.

Wait - make that for-profit gambling.

Alaska does allow gambling in the form of bingo and pull tabs, which are nonprofit, thereby escaping the definition of gambling established by lawmakers.

But in a state that relies upon oil to provide 51 percent of its funding, it would seem that every little bit would help.

After all, whether you're playing bingo for cash for a nonprofit organization or shooting craps in a casino, the end result is the same. The for-profit nature of an enterprise changes nothing about the customers' experience - gambling is gambling, whether or not a bookie gets paid.

Although considered an eyesore by many, casinos, when zoned and regulated properly, would not only serve as additional enticement for tourists to visit our state but also could be put to work for us.

In Atlantic City, N.J., for instance, casinos drew in more than $5 billion in 2005, of which the state collected $401 million in tax revenue, according to the State of New Jersey Casino Control Commission.

That doesn't include the $62 million the casinos were required by law to invest into state projects that year, nor does it include the $142 million in additional miscellaneous taxes New Jersey collected from casinos and customers.

That's a lot of money that could go toward bolstering a budget that relies heavily on Outside support. Aside from the fact that more than half of Alaska's budget is generated from oil, another 34.1 percent comes from the federal government, according to the fiscal year 2005 Comprehensive Annual Financial Report.

That leaves Alaska to fend for itself for a paltry 14.9 percent of its financial needs.

It's nice not to have to pay our way, of course; we live in one of the few remaining states that have yet to establish a sales tax.

But Alaska's budget is not only supported by oil, it depends on it, as we learned from the recent mishaps in Prudhoe Bay. To assume we will never run out of oil is like hoping our tuition won't increase again next year.

And that's a bet we aren't willing to make.

 

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