The following editorial, “Step right up, suckers… The real winners of the Lottery,” appeared in today’s edition (9/14/2010) of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
LITTLE ROCK — HURRY, hurry, hurry. It’s a sure thing! Win all kinds of time off from work-weeks and weeks of it. You don’t even have to spend the grocery money for a ticket. Just be one of the lottery’s own high-paid, indeed very highest-paid employees. Like its bow-tied, seersuckered director himself, Big Ernie, the source of all things good from the lottery. At least for himself and his buds.
This time Director and Benefactor Ernie Passailaigue awarded himself 200 hours off-that amounts to five weeks of leisure-for the outstanding job he did in getting the lottery started, if he does say so himself. And he does and will, time and again. You’d think his own horn would be just about worn out by now he’s spent so much time blowing it.
But look at his side of the story, if you can bear to: The poor man is making only $324,000 a year while thousands of applicants for those college scholarships the lottery is supposed to finance are still waiting for their money. The overworked guy deserves some time off. Indeed, if some of us had our way, his time off would be permanent. Because the whole, misbegotten idea of a state-run numbers racket would be history. The books would be closed on this sordid misadventure, and the state would finance all those college scholarships the honest, straightforward way-through a modest tax. Instead of running a numbers racket in the name of the people, one that amounts to a voluntary, regressive tax on the poorest and most gullible of us. Think of the hundreds of thousands that could be saved every year just on exorbitant salaries for arrogant execs like Big Ernie.
While he was at it, Director Passailaigue gave his two vice presidents, also imports from the Palmetto State,comp time amounting to five weeks off. Friends look after friends.
This time the lottery commission, that sleepy watchdog, roused itself long enough to upbraid the lottery’s chief pitchman, self-promoter, and croupier in-chief. (No carnival barker ever so looked, acted, and played the role so well.) A couple of the more vigilant commissioners did vote to demand the director’s resignation. Thank you, Ben Pickard and Joe White. A gesture is always welcome, even if it amounts to nothing more than a gesture.
THE commissioners themselves weren’t told of the director’s generous award of comp time to himself and selected company. Why trouble them with such details? Or as Big Ernie himself explained, he wanted to insulate them from any personal liability for his decision. How thoughtful. This way they were supposed to be spared any responsibility for his dubious deals. And yet the ungrateful commissioners still objected. Probably because of some atavistic attachment to things like ethics and responsibility.
Ernie Passailaigue has come to personify arrogance in state government. Rules about pay that apply to other agencies, he explained just last month, don’t apply to his. As the church lady on Saturday Night Live used to say, he’s spe-cial. That is, specially annoying.
Rebuking the director of the lottery, as its commissioners finally did last week, only touches the surface of what’s wrong with a state lottery. It is wrong root and branch, in conception as well as execution. A venture motivated by the love of money, and the love of easy money at that, is bound to prove a regular source of general embarrassment and specific scandals. A poisonous tree is bound to produce poisoned fruit. Chop it down.
