RALEIGH – “It’s more of a dictatorship in the Senate. You’ve got four or five people, maybe two, calling every shot over there.”

This observation, from Rep. Bruce Goforth (D-Buncombe), serves as a useful explanation for how things generally work in the North Carolina Senate. But Goforth made the remark to Asheville Citizen-Times reporter Jordan Schrader in a specific context: the Senate’s unwillingness to consider a House measure that would change the formula for distributing proceeds from the state lottery.

There’s nothing about North Carolina’s lurch into state-run gambling that isn’t objectionable or depressing. It was a bad, bad idea from the word go. But one of the most egregious aspects of the lottery is that its disparate impact within the state.

Western North Carolina lawmakers have been upset for a while now about the fact that lottery proceeds disproportionately flow to Eastern North Carolina school districts. In part, the cause of the disparity is that about a third of the revenue is distributed on the basis of property-tax burden – the higher the burden, the more money a jurisdiction receives. Because counties in the west tend to have lower tax rates, thanks in part to greater efficiency in the delivery of public services, they tend to get less lottery money. Naturally, they don’t like it.

I’m in agreement with the WNC lawmakers who successfully pressed the House for redress of their grievance. It’s doubly destructive to use ill-gotten gambling revenue to create an incentive for local governments to tax and spend. But it’s important to remember the other side of the coin: the fact that residents in Eastern North Carolina, and in higher-tax and lower-income communities more generally, tend to play the lottery in higher proportions than do their fellow Carolinians residing elsewhere.

My JLF colleague Joe Coletti worked out the numbers earlier this year. He found that the property-tax rate, unemployment rate, and poverty rates were pretty good predictors for the magnitude of lottery sales in North Carolina counties:

“The top 10 counties for lottery sales had average unemployment rates in 2006 of 6.2 percent and average property tax rates of 78.80 cents per hundred dollars of property value,” Coletti said. “Those same counties had an average poverty rate of 17.7 percent in 2004, the latest year for which poverty statistics are available.”

The comparable statewide averages were 5.1 percent unemployment, a 65.87-cent property tax rate, and a 13.8 percent poverty rate. “Among the 10 counties with the lowest levels of ticket sales per person, the average unemployment was 4.6 percent,” Coletti said. “Their property taxes averaged 48.13 cents. Their 2004 poverty rate was slightly higher than the statewide average at 14.4 percent.”

Because the east tends to rate a bit higher on these measures than the west, the region tends to rank higher in lottery sales. You can really see the effect on a map included with Coletti’s paper. So when I hear about disparities in lottery appropriations, I can’t help wondering whether there would be as much of a disparity if the origin of those dollars were included in the calculation.

Sounds like something a public-policy think tank ought to examine.

As for the broader question that Goforth brings up, about the extent to which power in the North Carolina Senate tends to be far more concentrated than in the House, I agree. But I wonder how many House members would go along with the policies likely to be needed to democratize the place: term limits, session limits, changes in campaign finance laws, and a redistricting commission charged with the task of drawing political boundaries to maximize competition and minimize incumbency protection.

After all, we can’t count on scandals and federal prosecution alone to ensure consultative leadership and rotation in office.

Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation.