Gov. Paul LePage said he believes the Maine State Lottery “absolutely” targets the poor and that if legislators passed a bill to end the lottery, he would sign it immediately.
Lawmakers from both parties seek to pass legislation implementing ban on people on public assistance buying lottery tickets with taxpayer-funded benefits.
Lawmakers from both parties are calling for closer scrutiny of Maine’s $230 million-a-year state-run lottery, including determining if its advertising targets Maine’s poor, who are the state’s most avid players.
The year’s frenetic events in Maine's statehouse mark a turn towards increasingly incendiary, winner-take-all politics. But the histrionics also underscore a more insidious problem: Maine’s weak accountability and transparency laws aren’t keeping up with the new pace of politics here, and lawmakers are doing little to change course.
This dynamic has earned Maine an F and a numerical score of 59, placing it tied for 42nd among the states in the 2015 State Integrity Investigation, an assessment of state government accountability and transparency conducted by the Center for Public Integrity and Global Integrity.