Slumping California Lottery searches for a winning hand
8/17/2008, Sacramento Bee
On Oct. 3, 1985, you could have stood in a long line outside a liquor store a few blocks from the Capitol for a chance to buy a small piece of cardboard and win a big sum of money. Today, you can do the same thing - only with no line. That, in 50 words, is the story of the California Lottery - a 23-year-old anachronism that is among the worst performing of the country's 42 state lotteries. While many other states' lotteries set sales records in the fiscal year that ended June 30, California lottery officials announced that revenues for the Golden State's games would be $275 million lower than the previous year. The slump comes at an inauspicious time for California. Desperate for new revenue sources that aren't direct tax increases, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has called for leveraging future lottery revenues into current cash to help plug the state's gaping budget hole.

Unimaginable debt and the lottery8/16/2008, Red Bluff Daily News
What will happen in California depends on three things: the ability to create a new addiction for many more people to the state lottery; the fate of an endangered species: politicians with both intestinal fortitude and fiscal discipline; and a turn around in the economy. I am not a betting person, but I do not think that any of those three possibilities will likely happen in time to make our budget sound, and the convergence of all three is less likely than the harmonic convergence predicted for Mr. Shasta at the end of 1999. By the way, the Governator is not the first person to think about using a lottery to bail out a state, or at least a colony. That first person would be Sir Edwin Sandys who had the charter for the colony of Virginia changed in 1611 to allow for the use of lotteries to finance the colony. Can California Gamble its way out of debt?

 

 

Jackpot For The Many 8/18/2008, San Diego Metro News
Millions of dollars a year in gaming revenue are spent by county Indian tribes on hundreds of charitable organizations and causes that benefit a wide segment of San Diego's population. Schools, chambers of commerce and groups that serve the poor, the elderly, the handicapped and victims of abuse are a few of the many organizations benefiting from Indian casinos and resorts. But the tribes also help one another. Earlier this year, the Pala Band of Mission Indians, which operates the Pala Casino Resort and Spa, spent $1 million to purchase 10 new mobile homes for members of the neighboring La Jolla Band whose homes were lost in last year's Poomacha wildfire.

State backs tribe for federal status8/17/2008, Redding Search Light State lawmakers have said the Winnemem Wintu Tribe should be recognized again by the federal government. But leaders of the small north state band of American Indians said the call will only be ceremonial unless it is heard by members of the U.S. Congress in Washington, D.C., and the tribe gains recognition once again with the federal government. The status would bring federal aid for health care and housing, reserving 42 acres that was once the site of a tribal village in Jones Valley near Lake Shasta as trust land, and sovereignty for the tribe of 123 people, said Mark Franco, the tribe's headman.