Nevada Needs A State Lottery, A Rant
Every time Powerball or Mega Millions gets even remotely high, the pilgrimage to Primm begins. Scores of people waste untold time, gas and money on a trip to either California or Arizona to buy lottery tickets. These events drain literally millions of dollars from Nevadans. Money that could be better spent in our state.
It is time that Nevada finally stops acting puritanical and begins a state lottery.
You’ll often hear people clutch their pearls, saying how the lottery is a “tax on the poor”. But I’m not sure if you’ve taken a gander around our community, you can play slots at your local gas station, video poker when you go grocery shopping, and drop untold fortunes on low odds games throughout the valley.
But wait, what about the casinos?! A $2 quick-pick or $10 scratch ticket is not taking away the $50 a hand 6-5 blackjack player. To the contrary, the Encore Boston Harbor, built and managed by Wynn, actually has state lottery vending machines inside of the casino. You’ll still find it buzzing away on weekends.
If Nevada’s gaming tax was a lottery, it wouldn’t be in the top 10
It comes down to dollars and making sense. The Nevada state gaming revenue tax rate, the money the state gets from gaming profits, is roughly 6.75%. In 2019, that amounted to $783,500,000. That’s a ton of money until you realize that California’s state lottery generated enough to put $1,800,000,000 into public education in the state in 2020-21. That’s an extra billion dollars. What’s worse, tens of millions of that money (at least) is coming from Nevadans. Money that could be spent to bolster our schools, police and roads here. But we ship that money off.
As a matter of fact, the Rhode Island state lottery did the math and it turns out 12 state lotteries make more money than Nevada’s gaming tax revenue makes our state.
U.S. Lottery Profit Ranked By State For Fiscal Year 2021 (with Nevada Gaming Tax Revenue Added In)
- New York, $3,590,650,000
- Florida, $2,226,000,000
- Texas, $1,998,310,000
- California, $1,868,270,000
- Georgia, $1,545,350,000
- Michigan, $1,400,990,000
- Ohio, $1,362,320,000
- Maryland, $1,312,140,000
- Pennsylvania, $1,320,620,000
- Massachusetts, $1,112,580,000
- New Jersey, $1,105,100,000
- North Carolina, $937,820,000
Nevada’s Gaming Tax Revenue, $783,500,000 (in fiscal year 2019) - Illinois, $776,320,000…
Adding a state lottery would bolster funding substantially, potentially matching or surpassing what our gaming tax revenue makes. That could be an absolute game-changer!
Unfortunately it is actually Constitutionally forbidden in the state of Nevada. Which means getting a lottery up and running would take not one but two public votes to have the Constitution amended and begin to bolster our funds.
Until then, our schools will continue to be criminally underfunded (we fund our schools, per child, among the lowest in the country), our roads will continue to feel like one constant rumble strip and we’ll continue to wait for hours for police to respond to a break-in due to understaffing.
(Gets off soap box, gets in car, drives to California to give them my money)
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