By John Lyon
Arkansas News Bureau

LITTLE ROCK — Actions by the Arkansas Lottery Commission and statements by the lottery’s director suggest the state is “well on the way to state-run casinos,” the head of a group opposed to the lottery said Tuesday.

The Family Council’s concerns that a state-run lottery would open the door to other forms of gambling appear to have been justified, Family Council Executive Director Jerry Cox said.

But Arkansas’ lottery director said the lottery will only include games that comply with Arkansas law and the will of voters who approved a constitutional amendment to create a state-run lottery in November.

Cox said recent developments have raised concerns about the types of games the lottery will include.

“We did try very hard to point out the dangers of doing a state lottery,” Cox told the Arkansas News Bureau. “I believe some of those concerns unfortunately have come to fruition.”

The Lottery Commission on Friday approved documents stating that the lottery possibly could include “monitor games.”

Ernie Passailaigue, who officially becomes executive director of lottery operations July 1, has said those games would be played on video monitors and could include, for example, horse-racing games or electronic versions of card games such as Texas hold ‘em.

Those comments suggest that “we are well on the way to state-run casinos,” Cox said Tuesday.

The Arkansas Scholarship Lottery Act of 2009, which established the framework for the games, lists several types of gambling that do not fall under the definition of a “lottery” and therefore are not authorized under the act, including casino gambling, bingo and raffles, pari-mutuel betting on horse racing or dog racing, wagering on electronic games of skill and “a video lottery.”

Passailaigue said Tuesday that in the lingo of the industry, a video lottery game is different from a monitor game. He said a video lottery game requires the player to make decisions during play, such as deciding which cards to keep or discard, whereas a monitor game is simply a matter of picking numbers, with the outcome decided purely by chance — though the game may be built around a “concept” such as Texas hold ‘em.

Video lottery games are clearly illegal in Arkansas and will not be part of the state lottery, Passailaigue said.

“Before we undertake to offer any game in Arkansas, the game has to be legal. If it’s not legal, we’re just wasting our time talking about it because I’m not going to offer it,” he said.

If Arkansas’ lottery offers monitor games, it will not do so until 12-20 months after the lottery starts, Passailaigue said. The Lottery Commission has set Oct. 29 as the target date for the first sales of scratch-off tickets and Dec. 14 for the first sales of tickets for drawing games.

Passailaigue said monitor games are “insignificant” because they bring in only a fraction of the revenue raised by games with larger jackpots, like Powerball.

“At the end of the day, monitor games mean nothing. Powerball means everything,” he said.

The Powerball Group and the Multi-State Lottery Association voted Monday to invite Arkansas to join the multi-state Powerball games. Passailaigue said he expects the state to join in early 2010.

The Scholarship Lottery Act states that a person who engages in an activity prohibited by Section 5-66-101 of the Arkansas Code, which concerns gambling offenses, is not guilty of any criminal offense if the Lottery Commission has determined that the lottery law authorizes the activity. Cox said the law leaves too much to the Lottery Commission’s discretion.

“We tried to point out over and over again during the legislative session that the legislation passed was to vague, too broad and gave far too much discretion to the lottery director and the lottery commission,” Cox said.

“I believe the Legislature failed to protect the people of Arkansas.”

House Speaker Robbie Wills, D-Conway, who sponsored the House version of matching House and Senate bills that became the Lottery Scholarship Act, said the language about superseding the gambling statute was included to avoid conflicts with an old law. To argue that it authorizes the Lottery Commission to OK casinos is “silly,” he said.

“They’re not going to do that. If they did, there’s no court in Arkansas that would read that statute to give them that kind of authority,” Wills said.