New Mississippi committee to study the lottery

Plans to create a lottery in Mississippi move forward as the government has formed a committee to study the business in neighbouring states.

US.- Mississippi is considering the creation of a new state lottery that would finance infrastructure, such as roads and bridges. In order to assess the best way to do so, a new committee has been formed to analyse neighbouring states’ bussineses and how they operate.

The initiative was pushed by House Speaker Philip Gunn and reunites 9 total members under Richard Bennett, who’ll be chairman of the committee. According to the latter, their goal is to gather facts and they won’t recommend if the state should or shouldn’t create a lottery but they aim to find the best way to do it in case it’s done. The first public meeting was held on Thursday and lasted just 30 minutes.

In order to gather information related to the economy as well as other social and operational matters, members of the committee will visit Lousiana and Arkansas. Its expected that Mississippi’s revenue could be close to Arkansas’, which earned US$85.2 million in the last fiscal year. There has been attempts to create a lottery in the past, but those proposals eventually died out. Even Governor Phil Bryant, who supports the current push, opposed the previous amendments and bills.

The ultimate goal of the panel is to provide with information for the legislative session for 2018 that will begin in January. Despite failing in the past, even current detractors seem to be -at some point- on board of this new initiative as proven by Gunn’s decision to create the committee despite opposing the lottery.