Back in 2001 when the JLF (and Dan Gerlach) were working hard to head off Governor Easley’s then proposed lottery, we published this Spotlight estimating
the amount of money that a NC Lottery would actually generate for the
state. At the time the Governor was projecting that the lottery would
generate about $500 million for education.? Last year when the
lottery was actually put in place the Governor’s office and the state
legislature estimated that it would bring gross about $1.2 billion and
net the state about $425 million. Yesterday’s Raleigh News and Observer
announced that the Lottery commission’s new target is $1 billion gross
with a net of $350 million. Our 2001 Spotlight estimated that the
lottery would gross $933 million and net $317 million. (This does not
factor out lost tax revenue due to the fact that lottery tickets are
not taxed while the dollars if spent elsewhere would be. The state
takes no account of this in their estimates.) After ajusting our 2001
predictions to 2006 dollars for inflation, our prediction at the time
was $1.063 billion gross and $361 milliion net. If they had only
listened to us, yesterday’s news would truly have been yesterday’s
news.