SANTA FE — I pulled into the gas station to fill the Subaru’s tank, but in addition to the usual queries — Credit or debit? Regular or premium? — I was asked another burning question:
Wanna buy a lottery ticket?
I sometimes request a receipt, and on a rare occasion purchase a car wash, but a lottery ticket?
In New Mexico, it’s called “Play at the Pump.” For those who don’t feel like walking all the way into the convenience store to spend a few bucks on the numbers, it’s a real step saver.
Born and raised in gambling-festooned Nevada, where locals yawn at the sight of slot machines in supermarkets, little surprises me when it comes to the encroachment of games of chance in everyone’s life. But for some reason, the state-authorized gas pump lottery sales seemed audacious — and just a little desperate.
I don’t see the wisdom of making it even easier to place one of the worst bets ever invented — one that’s state-sanctioned, no less. In this case, it’s a wager being placed in one of the nation’s poorest states, one that’s even rougher than Nevada on its children.
New Mexico officials these days are increasingly challenged to fund a popular college scholarship program from sagging lottery sales. “Play at the Pump” looks like a response to the slump.
Ticket sales are down, which could be a sign residents are wising up to the awful odds associated with the government-run numbers racket. As likely, it’s due to a slowly recovering jobs sector and the growing competition for gaming dollars from the state’s increasingly sophisticated Native American casinos.
The problem is pretty common. Politicians, who sold taxpayers on the dream that lottery revenues would replace the heavy lifting that accompanies a more sophisticated approach to funding education, awaken to find themselves looking just a little like carnival rubes. A sideshow shell game, a lottery’s fiscal promise is always overhyped. Its luster can’t help but fade with each passing year as operation costs rise and sales ebb with the economy.
An editorial in the Santa Fe New Mexican noted the relationship between declining lottery sales and the value of the state’s coveted Legislative Lottery Scholarship program, which the newspaper calls “one of the best deals in higher education in the country.”
Trouble is, the ladder for qualifying students keeps losing rungs. Lottery sales are shrinking. In the two decades the program has been in place, ticket sales that once paid for 100 percent of tuition for qualifying students gradually slipped to 90 percent. Earlier this year, the state Higher Education Department reported the program would now only cover 60 percent of tuition.
Of course, it doesn’t help that the scholarship plan is funded from lottery and liquor sales. That essentially means the best way to help promising young scholars succeed and make good career choices is to blow your paycheck on lottery dreams and booze.
New Mexico’s dilemma is a reminder of another truth about the state-operated policy racket: It makes for mediocre fiscal policy. Paying for education is expensive, and in hard times it can be controversial for elected officials. Keeping tuition costs low is difficult. It’s always easier to hustle the poor and unsophisticated than it is to craft a sound fiscal policy.
Legalized gambling can make good sense for a community when it employs people, pays its fair share of taxes, and draws customers from outside the area. Lotteries rarely do that.
Whether you “Play at the Pump” or at the counter, lotteries make just about any game in a modern casino look like a sure thing by comparison.
If you play the lottery regularly in New Mexico, you’re not even putting someone else’s kids through college anymore.
John L. Smith is a longtime Las Vegas journalist and author. Contact him at jlnevadasmith@gmail.com. On Twitter: @jlnevadasmith.
