The special House committee on the lottery is meeting this morning to take up a bill co-sponsored by one of Vance County’s two legislators, with the expectation that the committee will send the bill forward for the first House floor vote on a lottery as early as this afternoon.
The Select Committee on the Lottery has scheduled a session for 11 a.m., and the only topic is House Bill 1023, the North Carolina State Lottery Act, sponsored by Rep. Bill Owens and three others and co-sponsored by three additional lawmakers, including Michael Wray.
Wray, D-Northampton, is a freshman Democrat who represents the northern half of Vance County, as well as Warren County and his home county. He announced his support for a North Carolina lottery dedicated to education Friday in his weekly e-mail update to constituents.
The House has been the insurmountable obstacle to Gov. Mike Easley’s push for a lottery since he took office in 2001. Senate passage has never been a problem.
Lottery advocates pinned their hopes this year in part on the many new legislators, such as Wray, expecting that they would bring a fresh attitude to the issue. North Carolina is the only state on the East Coast and one of 10 in the nation without a lottery.
In a telephone interview Tuesday, Wray said he expects those hopes to be tested in a floor vote today, and he said it’s too close to say which way the vote will go.
“There are probably five votes, give or take,” Wray said. “Some people are on the bubble.”
He said he discussed the issue with Speaker Jim Black on Tuesday morning. “I think the speaker’s got great leadership,” Wray said of his fellow Democrat. “I commend him for that leadership.”
Unlike past lottery legislation that died without a House vote, the current bill would create a state lottery without a nonbonding referendum. It would establish a nine-member lottery commission to run the game.
Wray said the lottery could be running by Sept. 1, and in the process, he said, it would solve the problem of school construction facing Vance County and most other North Carolina counties.
As of Tuesday, Wray said, the plan is for half of lottery proceeds to go to public schools’ facility needs, such as the $28.1 million plan the Vance Board of Education has pending before the Board of Commissioners. All of the lottery money would be spent on education in some form.
Wray said he is prepared to work with Vance’s senior legislator, Rep. Jim Crawford, D-Oxford, to push local legislation that would allow the county to add 1 cent to the sales tax to finance the school system’s capital needs. That tax increase will be unnecessary, Wray said, if the lottery passes.