When the economy collapses and governments face painful budget crunches, the temptation is great to find new ways to raise money. The sudden fascination on Capitol Hill with legalizing, and taxing, Internet poker is a perfect example. And at the state level, state-sponsored or regulated gambling never looks better than amid visions of revenue flowing to the support of hard-pressed public services.
So let's not be too hard on Gov. Beverly Perdue for wandering off-message the other day as she signed a bill banning the Internet sweepstakes games that have been cropping up in so-called parlors throughout the state. It seems that every small town's main drag has one these days, often branded as an Internet cafe.
Still, the governor would have done better simply to congratulate legislators for their good judgment and moved on. These games may be a major potential revenue source. But the state lottery is bad enough when it comes to encouraging people, many of whom don't have much money to start with, to gamble. There's no good reason to just make the situation worse.
Perdue didn't specifically focus on the revenue issue as she was musing about a scenario under which the sweepstakes and their close cousin, video poker, could continue to operate.
This is what she said: "I think if you have video sweepstakes, whether it's video poker or video machines in general, we really do need to have some kind of concentrated, organized, unified system of regulation ... where we can be sure nobody is profiteering from it."
Her staff later insisted that she was not advocating a legislative U-turn. But her comments echoed the position taken by sweepstakes and video poker operators.
Facing a ban, the operators asked to be brought under a regulatory regime that, they said, could yield a revenue bonanza. The sweepstakes faction wanted Perdue to veto the recently enacted banning bill, which cleared both chambers of the General Assembly by wide margins and which takes effect in December.
A main reason lawmakers opted for the ban, however, is that authorities despaired of trying to regulate video gambling activities. Video poker was tainted by a pattern of illegal payouts and corruption and its appeal to problem gamblers. It was reasonable to worry that Internet sweepstakes were headed in the same direction.
North Carolina could make lots of money off these forms of gambling, but it has wisely chosen not to bite. This is a done deal, governor. Don't look back.
