A constitutional amendment to allow a paper lottery in Alabama is “dead for this session. It won’t be coming back,” said state Rep. Steve Clouse, House Ways and Means General Fund chairman. The amendment was estimated to generate $167 million a year, of which 75 percent of the money would go to the general fund and 25 percent would go to the Education Trust Fund. Voters would have had the opportunity to approve the amendment in March. “I think the vast majority of the people in Alabama want to be able to vote on a paper lottery like is taking place in Tennessee and Georgia and Florida right now and soon to be Mississippi,” Clouse said.
Observers said opposition came from lawmakers opposed to any sort of gambling. They also said part of the bill’s failure was the result of Macon and Greene county legislators’ efforts to protect electronic bingo at dog racetracks in their districts. Those legislators had filed measures allowing access to the electronic bingo machines, but Clouse said members of the GOP caucus opposed the racetracks having access to gaming machines offered by the Poarch Band of Creek Indians at their casinos in Atmore, Montgomery, and Wetumpka. Clouse said, “They wanted our clean lottery and not to include the machines. Obviously their local bills were not going to pass.”
As a result of the GOP’s efforts, several Democrats did not support the lottery bill. House Speaker Mac McCutcheon, said only 47 Republicans appeared to strongly support the lottery bill, which required 63 votes, or two-thirds of the 105 House members, to pass .Also, House Minority Leader Anthony Daniels said he wanted more lottery revenue to go to the Education Trust Fund. Daniels said, “I needed some clarity and some specifics on what our tax dollars would go toward. There wasn’t a lot of accountability.”
Clouse said several lawmakers wanted to attach amendments to the bill, including one proposing to use lottery money to fight Asian carp in the Tennessee River. Clouse said the Children’s Health Insurance Program could have benefited from lottery revenue. “We’re going to have increases in Medicaid, too. Just between two issues alone, that’s $110 million that we’re going to have to have in the General Fund to compensate for what we don’t have next year, and this is not counting other agencies, including prisons.”
State Senator Greg Albritton, chairman of the Senate General Fund Committee and the lottery bill’s sponsor, said its failure in the House was “extremely” frustrating. “The lottery is not the panacea. It’s not the answer to all the problems of the state. It’s simply a tool and a method that appears to be what folks want to be able to participate in and should be relatively easy to pass. That has proven more difficult.”
Previously, the Senate narrowly passed the lottery amendment. Alabama is one of five states without a state lottery; the others are Utah, Alaska, Hawaii and Nevada.
