Good day all. In the department of “Well Duh!” we have news that the sale of lottery tickets in Illinois have plummeted. The reason for this is rather simple.
Due to the mess that passes for a state budget in Illinois, the Illinois State Lottery Commission has stopped paying out prizes to people who have won them. Here are the details from Fox News:
Illinois Lottery ticket sales dropped to the lowest point yet this year in October, the same month lottery officials announced they were delaying payouts over $600 because of the state budget impasse, according to data obtained Thursday by The Associated Press.
Just how bad is the decline?
Sales for most tickets, including instant games and Powerball, declined about $21 million — with October sales at roughly $215 million compared to September’s approximately $236 million. The high was about $260 million in March, according to data obtained in a freedom of information request.
The figures confirm what ticket vendors at gas stations, convenience marts and grocery stores have said anecdotally for weeks about people’s frustration with Illinois’ budget problems.
Just as an aside, the ticket venders also get a piece of the pie when they sell tickets, and I think they get a slice when they’re the ones that sell a winning ticket.
Lottery officials announced in mid-October that anyone winning over $600 wouldn’t get the money right away because the account used to pay those winnings was dwindling. That followed news in late August that payouts over $25,000 were on hold because there wasn’t the authority to cut checks that big.
And why don’t they have the authority?
The state has entered its fifth month without a budget plan as first-year Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner and Democrats who control the Legislature remain deadlocked. Rauner wants pro-business and anti-union reforms, while Democrats say many of those ideas hurt the middle class and they want him to support new taxes.
Democrats. Why am I not surprised? They ran the state right into the ground financially and as always, when they run out of money, their first instinct is to loot the productive people’s bank accounts. I especially love how they say that letting people have their own money hurts them. As you might expect, the lottery winners aren’t just sitting back and waiting for the Illinois government to pull their collective heads from their asses.
Some winners have sued in federal court, seeking payment with interest along with requesting that the Illinois Lottery be barred from selling tickets until it has the authority to pay. The winners’ attorney also wants money owed to Illinois residents playing multi-state games held in an interest-bearing account instead of by the Illinois Lottery.
I’m not sure how these multi-state lotteries work exactly. I do know that if I buy a ticket in one state and win, I can’t collect from another state. I have to go to the state I bought it in. (And pay their taxes as well) Personally, I think that the courts should rule against the State of Illinois and not just be barred from selling tickets until they can pay the winners, I think it’s time to kick them out all together. They’ve shown that they are utterly incompetent, like most Progressive run states.
Thatisall
~The Angry Webmaster~
[yasr_visitor_votes size=”medium”]
