Nevadans gamble on lottery, but lawmakers won’t play

Lisa Snedeker

Thursday, June 7, 2001 | 10:52 a.m.

PRIMM -- It's a hot, breezy Sunday afternoon, and Bobby Williams' sport utility vehicle is just one of dozens of cars and trucks bearing Nevada plates in the parking lot at the Dry Lakes Lotto Store.

The Las Vegas resident is a regular. Once a month Williams -- or another member of his three-person lottery pool -- drives 35 miles south of Las Vegas and 100 yards over the California state line to buy $24 worth of lottery tickets.

"We rotate every month," he said.

Why make the long trip when Williams lives in the state with the nation's most liberal gambling laws?

For one, the 40-year-old Air Force retiree says he doesn't gamble at casinos. "But I've been doing lotteries for years. I think the odds are better."

And that's the other issue. Nevada -- a state in which you can cash in by lining up three cherries, getting closer to 21 and predicting the outcome of a ball game -- outlaws lotteries.

Nevada's 1864 constitution prohibits lotteries, a common practice for territories entering statehood, historians say.

In 1871, Gov. Henry Blasdel called lotteries the "least harmful form of gaming." But that didn't change things, nor did the state welcome lotteries when it legalized gambling in 1931.

Some Nevada lawmakers and at least one casino giant, don't see the harm. What they see are dollar signs.

The Dry Lakes store gets its name from its barren location, miles from any California town. The outpost, recently purchased by Las Vegas Strip casino giant MGM MIRAGE, is California's leading lottery outlet, with more than $6.2 million in ticket sales in 2000 -- mostly to Nevadans.

That's $1.2 million more than the No. 2 outlet, a Los Angeles-area liquor store that's sold three winning jackpot tickets since the lottery began in the 1980s.

Because of the obvious demand, some lawmakers took a gamble in the just concluded legislative session that a state lottery could provide sorely needed income for the state's education and senior citizen programs.

Like so many lottery players, they lost. Again.

Measures to launch a state lottery have been defeated 14 times since 1975, thanks in part to lobbying by Nevada's gaming industry. In 1990, residents did vote to allow charitable and religious organizations to hold lotteries as fund-raisers.

The latest plan that would have let Nevada voters decide in 2004 whether to permit a state lottery died in the Senate Government Affairs Committee, one vote short of reaching the Senate floor.

"I think it just encourages gaming problems," said committee Chairwoman Ann O'Connell, R-Las Vegas, who added that she wasn't sure a lottery would raise much money after administrative costs.

"It's crazy," said Assemblywoman Kathy McClain, D-Las Vegas, the resolution's sponsor. "In an open gaming state, it's a little incongruous we don't have a lottery. It was another revenue source that the state could have used."

But the battle might not be over. McClain is considering a petition drive to go to the voters with her lottery proposal.

While 37 states and the District of Columbia have lotteries, not everyone thinks lottery is a good play.

"It's a loser for the state," said Bill Thompson, gaming industry expert and UNLV professor. "It won't attract outside money and the people prone to play will be middle- to lower-class."

During a past legislative session, gambling lobbyists released a study that showed lotteries are played by lower-income people who use money that's needed for necessities.

McClain, however, said that argument doesn't make a lot of sense in a state where everyone already has plenty of opportunities to gamble everywhere from the gas station to the supermarket.

"If they are going to gamble away their paycheck, then they can gamble it away now," she said.

The gambling industry has opposed attempts to allow a state lottery, in part fearing competition for their casinos. The current bill, however, passed the Assembly without any opposition from gaming lobbyists, the most powerful in the Legislature.

"The position the industry took this time was absolutely neutral," said gaming lobbyist Bob Ostrovsky.

And while MGM MIRAGE bought the Dry Lakes Lotto Store, it doesn't necessarily mean the Las Vegas-based casino giant is getting heavily into the lottery business, said Alan Feldman, company spokesman.

The move was meant to give MGM MIRAGE total control of gambling operations near its three casino-hotels that attract freeway travelers along Interstate 15. The company plans to refurbish the business and rename it the Primm Valley Lotto Store.

"We're using it purely as a chance to market our Primm properties," Feldman said.

It might be smart marketing, but Thompson thinks that -- for gamblers -- the lottery is a "stupid bet." He said lotteries have a 50 percent payback compared with percentages in the high 90s offered by most casino slot machines.

But that doesn't seem to stop Nevadans from making regular treks over the state line to purchase lottery tickets.

"I've seen the lines clear around the outlet," said Shannon Bybee, executive director of the International Gaming Institute at UNLV. "You have a better chance of getting killed in an accident driving out there than you do of winning."