N.C. efforts for lottery fall short — again

Margaret Lillard

Thursday, Aug. 25, 2005 | 9:48 a.m.

RALEIGH, N.C. -- It's still out there.

Like a phantom that refuses to be exorcised, a lottery haunts the halls of the General Assembly -- surviving a stonewall of opposition but never quite gaining the support necessary to burst fully to life as the Senate wrapped up its work this week.

"I thought there would be a break, and that break never occurred," Senate Leader Marc Basnight by telephone Wednesday afternoon as he drove home from the chamber's marathon session that ended at sunrise.

Basnight, Gov. Mike Easley and other lottery supporters continued their push to the 11th hour and 59th minute of the Senate's session as they have for weeks, fruitlessly telephoning and cajoling anti-lottery holdouts.

But they declined to take advantage of a procedural loophole that would have given them the single vote needed to pass the bill, citing respect for an absent senator and for legislative tradition.

"There were some opportunities to use some trickery, but we decided not to do that," Basnight said. "That would have been unethical."

So the bill to create a lottery remains on the table for the Legislature to take up again when it meets next spring -- or sooner. The House met again Wednesday, with Speaker Jim Black warning that representatives may not finish their work until next week.

Unless the House adjourns for the year Wednesday, a majority of senators would have to come back later to close down the session. At that point, they could take up outstanding legislation such as the lottery bill.

But with five Democrats and all the Senate's 21 Republicans entrenched against it, Basnight said, there's no point in flogging the issue any further this year -- or, potentially, next year.

"It will not pass next May, the following January, the following May -- it will never pass in this state without bipartisan support," Basnight said.

Furthermore, he and other senators were adamant Wednesday that they are finished with their work until next year's short session convenes.

"We're out of there. That was made pretty clear by the folks on our side -- we have no intention to go back there," Sen. Charles Albertson, one of five anti-lottery Democrats, said from his home in Duplin County. "We've been there long enough, we've done the major items that need to be done."

And that didn't include the lottery, despite its supporters' best efforts to find -- or break -- a hole in the opposition.

Easley, who has made getting a lottery for education programs a priority in his first 4_aghalf years in office, spoke by telephone late Tuesday with several lottery opponents.

But his effort was countered by calls and e-mail from citizens -- some spurred by pro-lottery ads run by the N.C. Association of Educators -- urging the holdouts to stand fast.

"The result was that an overwhelming number of calls that came in to the office were anti-lottery," said Sen. Richard Stevens, R-Wake, identified in the ads as a potential swing vote.

The pro-lottery faction bypassed its best chance, declining to press the question of whether one lottery opponent had properly requested a leave of absence from Wednesday's session.

Senate Democrats contended that Sen. Hamilton Horton, R-Forsyth, failed to request leave, which is necessary to allow an absent member to pair up with a colleague who is present and would vote differently on a bill.

The "pair" effectively cancels out the two votes so an absence doesn't affect the outcome of a vote. Horton, a lottery opponent who is on vacation, had paired votes with lottery supporter Sen. David Hoyle, D-Gaston.

With Sen. John Garwood, R-Wilkes, a lottery opponent, hospitalized overnight, a vote would probably have ended in a tie broken by Lt. Gov. Beverly Perdue, the Senate president and a lottery supporter.

After a few tense moments, Basnight, D-Dare, asked that Horton's absence be honored.

"That would be an awful thing to do to Senator Horton and also to the North Carolina Senate," he said. "The lottery is not worth that to us."