“Probably the same black hole the Lottery money drops into.”
That’s EXACTLY what I was thinking and going to post. Here in WA State, IIRC (it’s been years ago)all the extra Lottery money was supposed to go primarily to education, yet we still have initiatives for levies for education on a consistent basis. I suspect that WA isn’t the only state in which that is occurring.
They did the same here In Michigan. Passed the Lottery claiming it would help the Schools.
So the Lottery Revenue went to the School fund but the state racheted back the money they ponied up. So they still claim a shortfall and local Districts continually go for Property Tax increases.
I don’t know how old you are or if you are a veteran, so you may or may not remember this. About 1972 or ‘73, some Vietnam vets in WA started to ask questions about war bonuses for WA war vets. Going back to earlier wars, the state had always paid a bonus to those who had seen combat, paid for with a special cigarette tax. When this came up, Olynpia claimed there was no money available to pay such a bonus. A little bit of digging turned up the inconvenient fact that the state had continued to collect that tax over the years, long after all eligible vets had been paid. Oops!! Checks for $200 were soon in the mail.
Much like the Spanish-American War telephone tax that was finally repealed in 2006, it goes to show that once a tax is enacted, it’s nearly impossible to get rid of. Once people forget about it, the money just gets diverted into somebody else’s pet project. So it is with the lottery, which, as we all know, is nothing more than a tax on the mathematically-challenged.