State lottery needs to go slow online

It’s more of the same in Springfield, as two stories by Daily Herald state government writer Mike Riopell Wednesday point out.

First, Gov. Pat Quinn released a three-year budget projection that is mostly doom and gloom as politicians on both sides of the aisle try to determine where cuts will be made in the absence of new revenues beyond the temporary income tax increase.

Meanwhile, state Senate President John Cullerton said gambling expansion will be back on the table in 2012. That means there will be more discussion about slots at Arlington Park and five new casinos in Lake County, Chicago and elsewhere. A major expansion of gambling was approved in the legislature last year, but Quinn vowed to veto it, so it now languishes as gambling proponents try to convince the governor that increasing gambling revenues are one way to ease the state’s financial crisis.

We have urged in this space before that Quinn and legislators should go slow on expansion, while at the same time acknowledging that some forms of gambling are here to stay. Finding the right mix of what is acceptable and what can be regulated appropriately is the key.

Now another form of gambling will be in the mix. Again, we urge caution.

The U.S. Justice Department made public last month a legal opinion that allows states and their lotteries to bring online gambling to residents as long as sports betting is not part of the deal.

Illinois, along with New York, sought the ruling and now apparently is looking to move forward in allowing lottery tickets to be sold online.

“When you look at the Internet, which is what everybody uses these days to buy everything, it seemed like a very, very logical thing to use the Internet to increase the player base,” Michael Jones, the superintendent of the Illinois lottery, told The New York Times in a Dec. 24 article. He went on to say that the lottery could raise revenue in a “nontax way” to help the state deal with its financial problems.

He may be right. And he also may be right when he told the Times that the state may be able to “guard against excessive play” through credit card purchases online. But we don’t know enough about the system yet to have that kind of confidence. So when Jones says Illinois could be selling lottery tickets online in three months, we say, hold on. We want the state to give us more information before moving forward into this uncharted territory.

And we’d like some pledges that lottery sales today in Illinois won’t morph into more Internet gambling tomorrow as one New Jersey legislator envisions.

“We can be the Silicon Valley of Internet gaming,” state Sen. Raymond Lesniak told The Associated Press. “It’s the wave of the future.”

We urge Illinois legislators and Quinn to set higher standards as they look for that right mix.