Siegelman wants one more shot at lottery

Published 12:00 am Thursday, May 16, 2002

If at first you don’t succeed … scratch off another ticket.

Gov. Don Siegelman thinks Alabama is ready for another vote on a statewide lottery. While on the campaign trail Wednesday in Phenix City, Siegelman said, “It’s time for a lottery to benefit education.”

State Sen. Hank Sanders, D-Selma, said this is the right time for another shot at a lottery vote.

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“I think he’s stepping out on a limb a little, but he’s near the tree,” Sanders said. “I’ve certainly urged the governor for some time to bring it back up.”

In 1998, Siegelman soundly defeated then-Gov. Fob James with a platform built on a statewide lottery. But in October 1999, 650,000 Alabama voters tossed out the lottery idea and sent Siegelman in search of other funds for education.

He’s still looking. Last year, Siegelman declared proration and cut education funding by 6.1 percent.

“A lot of people have said, ‘Governor, they tricked us, they fooled us… they said they would bring forward their own plans, maybe even another lottery,” Siegelman said at a stop in Huntsville on Wednesday.

Dr. John Fain, pastor at First Baptist Church, fought against the lottery in 1999. He said he’ll do it again, and he believes churches in the state will rally again to defeat Siegelman’s idea.

“What’s right is right, and what’s wrong is wrong,” Fain said. “The end doesn’t ever justify the means.”

Before the referendum on the lottery in 1999, churches around the state organized grassroots movements to help defeat the proposal.

“That will start up again,” Fain said. “It may even be greater this time.”

George Evans, president of the Selma City Council, said he isn’t sure whether or not the lottery is a good idea. He said it may be time for voters to have another say on the issue.

“There may be people who have a different opinion now than they did then,” he said.

But Evans also said the numbers must be studied closely.

“If, in 10 years, we look back and see that it was a bad idea, then we’ve got to look at that now,” Evans said.

The Alabama Policy Institute, a conservative political think-tank in Birmingham, helped research the negative effects of a statewide lottery during the first vote in 1999. Wednesday, the organization quickly declared Siegelman’s idea a bad one.

“He’s trying to push a plan that Alabama citizens have already voted down once,” said Kristin Day, a spokeswoman for API. “It’s not a fiscally responsible plan.”

In information released Wednesday, API said Mississippi, with its casinos, is in proration.

“Florida has a lottery and yet it is facing a $1 billion deficit. And Georgia, with its model lottery, is also facing a financial crisis,” an API release said. The group could not elaborate on Georgia’s financial problems, where the HOPE Scholarship for higher education is funded through the state’s lottery.

Sanders said he believes Siegelman has sorted through the problems of the failed lottery plan and will offer voters a no-lose deal.

“From what little I know about it, I don’t think the governor is going to use the lottery money for a scholarship plan,” Sanders said. “All the money raised from it will go straight into the education budget.”

The two leading Republican candidates for governor, Bob Riley and Steve Windom, blasted Siegelman’s idea.

Windom wasn’t any less outspoken on the issue.

“Don Siegelman told you back in 1998 and 1999 that he didn’t have a Plan B,” Windom said. “Well, he does now. Plan B is a recycled Plan A.”

According to the Associated Press, Siegelman’s original lottery plan would have allocated the money to college scholarships, pre-kindergarten programs and computer technology improvements. His new lottery proposal would put the money directly into the state education budget, where the governor and the Legislature could decide how to use it each year.