Unlucky lottery winner gets IOU from state of Illinois

[thundley4]

marmar (67,843 posts  Tue Sep 1, 2015, 12:09 PM


Unlucky lottery winner gets IOU from state of Illinois


Winning the lottery is typically cause for jubilation. Not so for Danny Chasteen — who, instead of a big payoff, got an IOU from the fiscally strapped state of Illinois

Chasteen and his girlfriend, Susan Rick, won $250,000 last month in the state lottery but could not claim the prize as legislators had not passed a state budget, according to reports.

For lottery winnings exceeding $25,000, the state comptroller has to process the check, and, with the budget in limbo, those funds cannot be disbursed, the Chicago Tribune reported.

“You know what’s funny? If we owed the state money, they’d come take it, and they don’t care whether we have a roof over our head,” Rick said, according to the Tribune.

.....(snip).....

“Illinois, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Connecticut and New York rank (as) the bottom five states, largely owing to low amounts of cash on hand and large debt obligations,” said Eileen Norcross, a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10027129879

ProfessorGAC (26,129 posts)
9. It's Always Been Used As Such Though

Remember that the original sales point was that the excess would fund education. Then in a monumental display of laziness, they found it easier to just add it to the general fund.

As a result, the education funding in Illinois is still preponderantly based upon property taxes and apportioned that way. So, the inequity in district funding is still there and the overall funding of education hasn't kept up with inflation.

Stupid? Yes. Shady? Yes. Fact of life? Alas, yes.

Democrats have ruled Illinois politics for decades.

Gidney N Cloyd (13,537 posts)
10. “Illinois, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Connecticut and New York rank (as) the bottom five states"

We don't have any problems in Illinois that wouldn't largely be fixed by progressive taxes and fewer thieving republicans.

A flat tax is required by the state constitution. Republicans haven't been in charge of Illinois for decades.

MohRokTah (8,974 posts)
14. Not enough people came out to keep Quinn in office.

Rauner got in there and the state has been completely ****ed ever since.

Rauner is not the problem. Democrats have controlled the Illinois budget for decades.

On a side note. Illinois is losing billions of dollars of income every year because the state government and other democrat entities see raising taxes as the only solution to everything.

[Carl]

ProfessorGAC (26,129 posts)
9. It's Always Been Used As Such Though

Remember that the original sales point was that the excess would fund education. Then in a monumental display of laziness, they found it easier to just add it to the general fund.

As a result, the education funding in Illinois is still preponderantly based upon property taxes and apportioned that way. So, the inequity in district funding is still there and the overall funding of education hasn't kept up with inflation.

Stupid? Yes. Shady? Yes. Fact of life? Alas, yes

Every state I bet has pulled the same scam yet you mutts think more and bigger government is needed.

[Ralph Wiggum]

Jeez, do they even know that Democrats control the state?

[obumazombie]

The fecal touch affirmative action president left Chicago in a financial mess.
Then he moved to Washington to repeat the process.
They're trying to keep it very very quiet...

Silly me. I really thought that every state's lottery operation was walled off from the rest of its finances.
They collect bets, pay out winnings and administrative costs, and turn over the profits to general fund.

End of discussion.
No muss, no fuss.

Right?

In Illinois, based on recent developments, we know that's obviously not the case — leading me to wonder how many other states potentially have the same problem the Land of Lincoln currently has.
You see, the state is about to move into the third month of a budget standoff between Republican Governor Bruce Rauner and its Democrat-controlled state legislature.

As a result, because the lottery's operations are at least in a legal sense commingled with the rest of the state's finances, its comptroller has been forced to cancel payouts of lottery winnings greater than $25,000.
It appears that very few media outlets outside of Illinois are interested in covering this obviously important story.

Why?

Three paragraphs in the Chicago Tribune, which has one of the most comprehensive stories on the mess, would seem to explain why there hasn't been much national press coverage:

Illinois lottery winners have to wait for payout due to budget impasse



After years of struggling financially, Susan Rick thought things were looking up when her boyfriend won $250,000 from the Illinois Lottery last month.
She could stop working seven days a week, maybe fix up the house and take a trip to Minnesota to visit her daughter.

But because Illinois lawmakers have not passed a budget, she and her boyfriend, Danny Chasteen, got an IOU from the lottery instead.

"For the first time, we were finally gonna get a break," said Rick, who lives in Oglesby.
"And now the Illinois Lottery has kind of messed everything up."

... Under state law, the state comptroller must cut the checks for lottery winnings of more than $25,000.
And lottery officials said that because lawmakers have yet to pass a budget, the comptroller's office does not have legal authority to release the funds.

... While Rossi said winners will eventually receive their money once a budget is in place, the promise is cold comfort for Rick.

"You know what's funny?
If we owed the state money, they'd come take it and they don't care whether we have a roof over our head," Rick said.

"Our budget wouldn't be a factor.
You can't say (to the state), 'Can you wait until I get my budget under control?'"

... Rossi would not speculate on what effect the delays might have on the lottery's revenues if people choose to stop playing until the state resolves the budget crisis, and he was not aware of any effort to pass a special measure to allow the comptroller to pay out winnings while lawmakers and the governor haggle over the budget.

... if the delays stretch on indefinitely, Smith said, word will spread — especially if it affects people who play regularly.

"If that news just continues to go viral, and it goes back to their neighborhoods and people are talking about it, I think it could have an impact," Smith said.
"And even if it affects sales by a percent or two, that's bad for the lottery."

If you're in the leftist press and you see the completely justified resentment displayed in the excerpt's first bolded paragraph, you realize that you don't want to get too many quotes from winners who are being stiffed.
Susan Rick's sentiment is exactly what Tea Party and other protesters have been saying for years about heavy-handed governments exercising their will without consequences and taking care of their cronies, while the little people are the first to get stiffed while being held to most nitpicky standards of everyday conduct.

If you're in the leftist press, you're going to swallow really hard at the implications of the second and third bolded paragraphs.
What would happen if millions of people decided (better word: learned) that they can't even trust their state lotteries to do what they're supposed to do?

I don't think I'm the only one who naively believed that they were walled off from other state operations, even in historically corrupt Illinois.

If the number of bettors and the amounts they bet start to decline significantly over the long haul, several states already on the brink
— Illinois is certainly one of them
— would be right up against the bankruptcy wall.

Additionally, several states now thought to be in decent fiscal condition no longer would be.
Government would either have to get smaller, or the states would have try to go to the well for even more taxes.

The press knows that the public in most places is in no mood for the latter, which, because of balanced-budget laws, would force the former to take place.

Thus, from the press's perspective, it's best not to report what's going on in Illinois, or to at least try as much as possible to keep people from taking an interest in it.

The Associated Press has a brief five-paragraph item at its national site whose headline ("LOTTERY WINNERS DON'T GET LARGESSE, BUT GET LEFT OUT") is in my view deliberately incoherent.
A relevant Google News search returns stories which are predominantly local in origin.

The larger lesson here is that we must assume in the absence of definitive contrary evidence that governments at all levels run every program on a hand-to-mouth basis, and that the politicians will attempt to raid any money present anywhere else to paper over their problems.
The biggest federal examples:
Social Security,
Medicare, and
Obamacare.

The biggest state-managed example:
Medicaid.

A common local example:
bloated school districts which routinely paid underqualified and sometimes incompetent administrators six-figure salaries while starving their classrooms.

full article...


http://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/tom-blumer/2015/08/31/why-press-so-quiet-about-illinois-lottery-winners-not-getting-paid#sthash.NSIEV9sL.dpuf

[98ZJUSMC]

Gidney N Cloyd (13,537 posts)
10. “Illinois, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Connecticut and New York rank (as) the bottom five states"

We don't have any problems in Illinois that wouldn't largely be fixed by progressive taxes and fewer thieving republicans.

Oh, yes....... you do.  Believe me.  Thieving Republicans?  In Illinois?!?!?!?  Name them.

We'll wait, idiot.

[98ZJUSMC]

Jeez, do they even know that Democrats control the state?

It doesn't matter if there is a (R)ino as Governor, or not.  Illinois revolves around Socialist Shitcago

[Skul]

The winners will end up taking the state to small claims court.
They will loose, and be ordered to pay court costs, and attorney fees.
This Illinois, remember.

[USA4ME]

Gidney N Cloyd

10. “Illinois, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Connecticut and New York rank (as) the bottom five states"

We don't have any problems in Illinois that wouldn't largely be fixed by progressive taxes and fewer thieving republicans.

All 5 states are run by liberals. Most are Dems, less than a handful are Republicans, but they are liberals.

And all 5 have problems beyond their tax rate and the less than a handful of Republicans. Are their Democrats and/or liberals that have any say-so in how the State is run? Then you have problems and will always have problems.

.

[Duke Nukum]

How can they sell tickets if they can't cover the cost of the prizes? Isn't that fraud?

[thundley4]

How can they sell tickets if they can't cover the cost of the prizes? Isn't that fraud?

Good question. Maybe the state's Attorney General should investigate the matter. Oh wait, that's Lisa Madigan, the step-daughter of Michael Madigan, the criminal democrat that has been running the state for almost 3 decades.

[landofconfusion80]

i seriously doubt it'll make a dent in the lottery, poor people will still stand in line at the gas station to pay their special tax.

[thundley4]

i seriously doubt it'll make a dent in the lottery, poor people will still stand in line at the gas station to pay their special tax.

Hey now!  I buy $5 of mega millions tickets when I buy cigarettes every week.

[landofconfusion80]

Hey now!  I buy $5 of mega millions tickets when I buy cigarettes every week.

that'll buy a whole lot of virginia slims!

[thundley4]

that'll buy a whole lot of virginia slims!

some of the people buying lottery tickets buy either Newports, or those cigars sold as singles or in twin packs.

[Chris_]

some of the people buying lottery tickets buy either Newports, or those cigars sold as singles or in twin packs.

They come in grape flavor now.

[thundley4]

They come in grape flavor now.

No more having to soak them in Kool-Aid anymore. 

[Lacarnut]

It is really sad that the politicians con the voters in favor of approving gambling. They paint this rosy picture of the $$$ it will take in and cure many the financial ills of government. Spending goes up and states like FL, NJ and LA are in worse shape. Plus, the poor piss away their money. 

[Chris_]

It is really sad that the politicians con the voters in favor of approving gambling. They paint this rosy picture of the $$$ it will take in and cure many the financial ills of government. Spending goes up and states like FL, NJ and LA are in worse shape. Plus, the poor piss away their money.

They sold it here as the "education lottery"... the money would fund public schools and universities. 

Bunch of crap.

[BlueStateSaint]

They sold it here as the "education lottery"... the money would fund public schools and universities. 

Bunch of crap.

IIRC, that's how it was sold in NYS as well.

[JohnnyReb]

They sold it here as the "education lottery"... the money would fund public schools and universities. 

Bunch of crap.

Same in S.C..

But it does seem to be the only way, or best way, to tax or get back money given to DUmmies by the government.

Buy their votes today and take that money back tomorrow.

[BlueStateSaint]

Same in S.C..

But it does seem to be the only way, or best way, to tax or get back money given to DUmmies by the government.

Buy their votes today and take that money back tomorrow.

Never thought of it that way.   From what I've seen of NY residents, you're dead on.  H5 given.

[thundley4]

Same in S.C..

But it does seem to be the only way, or best way, to tax or get back money given to DUmmies by the government.

Buy their votes today and take that money back tomorrow.

But it always tilts the lottery sales receipts toward the first week of the month or so. Granted, there is a small boon at the end of the month when a few people have a little money money left over.

[Big Dog]

It is really sad that the politicians con the voters in favor of approving gambling. They paint this rosy picture of the $$$ it will take in and cure many the financial ills of government. Spending goes up and states like FL, NJ and LA are in worse shape. Plus, the poor piss away their money.

I disagree with one part of your post, my friend.

Plus, the poor piss away their money.

Lotteries are a revolving door of government theft and redistribution. You and I are taxed (government theft); the State skims off the cream and gives the skim milk to the "poor"; the "poor" spend that money on lottery tickets; and the State spends the lottery ticket money on itself.

[SVPete]

IIRC, that's how it was sold in NYS as well.

Same bait-and-switch in CA.

[obumazombie]

It's funny how state governments worked hard at putting illegitimate numbers games out of business.
Now they are the illegitimate numbers game.
The state governments have so much in common with organized crime.
Nice work eliminating the competition.