Must confess that Charlotte Observer associate editor Jack Betts left me scratching my head with his column on Jim Black, the lottery, and everything. Betts correctly makes the obvious connection between Black’s sudden switch to a more pro-lottery stance and Black’s involvement in the ongoing Pork Gate issue, a connection that has received the elephant-in-the-living room treatment from a shameful number of reporters and editors.
But Betts follows that with:
One day after a group of Republicans demanded the speaker resign, Black appointed a committee loaded with lottery supporters and ordered it to move fast. Last week the committee began; Wednesday morning it finished, voting almost unanimously in favor of a lottery to provide money to build schools, fund scholarships and pay for other education programs. The House approved it 61-59.
It was a brilliant stroke. Black’s newfound advocacy of a lottery diverted attention from the discretionary funds and focused it on raising new revenue for education, traditionally the most popular government program.
Is Betts just giving the bloodless play-by-play of how and why something went down in Raleigh? Is he crediting Speaker Black with a “brilliant” political gambit that gets Black out of a tight political spot? Or is Betts cheering for the prospect that a lottery, at long last, with route yet more revenue to Raleigh, “earmarked” for education? I don’t know, although I think Betts is being descriptive and not normative.
I do know, however, that Speaker Black, under fire for his judgment and decision-making, immediately moved to hand Gov. Mike Easley one of his top legislative priorities. Those of us who think a state-run lottery is bad idea, one that is sure to magnify the bad judgment and fiscal irresponsibility of both the state and private citizens, marvel that the lottery got a big boost from — bad judgment and fiscal irresponsibility.
