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Transparency Needed at Massachusetts Lottery
by Les
The Boston Globe reported over the weekend about how the Massachusetts Lottery is pursuing a very aggressive goal of $1 billion in profits by launching new raffle-style games and selling tickets to jumbo drawings like Mega Millions through hundreds of electronic vending machines.
The new Massachusetts Treasurer (the Lottery falls within his authority) has promised to make the Treasurer’s Office more transparent by doing things like putting the state’s check register online for public viewing. Throughout this push for more transparency, arguably the most significant division within the Treasurer’s Office – the Lottery – has been left aside. Stop Predatory Gambling Foundation filed an open records request in November 2010 asking for copies of the Lottery’s marketing reports and its advertising from the last two fiscal years. We received an acknowledgement of the request but have heard nothing since- it is now almost seven months.
If made public, the reports will show how the Lottery aggressively encourages citizens to lose money using tactics that other businesses cannot thanks to the lottery’s exemption from truth-in-advertising laws.
Any leader genuinely committed to making the Treasurer’s Office more transparent needs to include the Lottery. Otherwise, it is simply an empty promise.
Lottery marketing
There is no question that lotteries are encouraging people to lose their money and actively target minorities. Our lottery here in Illinois has paid for marketing research about how to target lottery offerings to African-American and Hispanic populations. Every lottery should should publicly reveal what they know about the people using the lottery and admit to the very predatory marketing practices they use to sell the lottery to the poor and minority populations.