Baker
Alabama State Rep. Alan Baker said it was premature for him to comment on a lottery bill that was passed by the Alabama Senate because the bill hasn't even been assigned to a House committee and amendments to the bill sponsored by State Sen. Greg Albritton are likely.
Baker said he has not read the bill passed by the Senate and would not do so until it comes before the House.
"I'm not going to waste my time until it comes to the House floor," Baker said. "If it comes out of committee I will study the bill."
Baker said he didn't know if the lottery bill would even make it out of the House committee for a vote by the entire House of Representatives.
"Right now there are too many unknowns," Baker said. "I have no idea how the bill will read until it comes out of committee."
Albritton's bill passed the Senate on a 21-12 vote with 21 votes needed to achieve the three-fifths majority needed to propose an amendment to the Alabama Constitution. It will also take a three-fifths majority vote by the House to put the matter on the ballot for Alabama voters to decide. If approved by the Legislature, the amendment will be placed on the ballot with the 2020 presidential primaries.
Albritton said there has already been a lot of misrepresentation about the bill he sponsored, especially comments made that the lottery bill is designed to help the Poarch Creek Indians keep a monopoly on video gaming.
"The best thing for Poarch would be no lottery and they keep rolling along," Albritton said. "This bill does not give anything to the Indians."
Albritton said the Supreme Court has ruled video gaming off Indian trust land is illegal and his lottery bill only solidifies the laws Alabama currently has on video gaming. He said the lottery bill would not expand video gaming.
Albritton said his bill is modeled after lotteries in neighboring states like Florida, with paper ballots and scratch off tickets only.
Others have criticized Albritton's bill because it does not earmark any of the lottery profits to education. His bill would divide the revenue between the Alabama Trust Fund and the General Fund. However, the Alabama Trust Fund would receive the first $184,000 to repay the money borrowed from that fund and put into the General Fund in fiscal years 2013, 2014 and 2015. After the debt is paid the lottery money, estimated to generate about $166 million annually, would be divided equally between the trust fund and the General Fund.
Albritton added that the lottery would greatly benefit education on several fronts.
"We're trying to build the General Fund so we won't have to borrow money from the Education Trust Fund," Albritton said.
He said the state will be facing major challenges in dealing with the prisons and Medicaid and he doesn't want to see the Legislature taking money out of education to fund other projects.
He also said taxes paid on lottery winnings would go into the Education Trust Fund.
