SENATE APPROVES BILL TO REIN IN LOTTERY ABUSES
(AUSTIN) — The Senate on Thursday gave unanimous approval to a bill that its author said is intended to send a clear message to the state lottery commission and any other state agencies who think they can defy the will of the legislature. SB 28, by Edgewood Senator Bob Hall, would outlaw the use of third-party couriers who buy lotto tickets on behalf of customers, which he said is a clear violation of the legislature’s intent when it created the state lottery in 1992. More than that, he said the Texas Lottery Commission intentionally rewrote rules to subvert legislative will and allowed gaming through mobile devices, a vulnerability that may have permitted outside actors to conspire to win previous lottery jackpots. “The Lottery Commission has failed to uphold any principles it had been charged with protecting,” said Hall. He said the rule changes made by commissioners over the past decade have opened the door to illegal gambling practices the legislature never authorized.
Senator Bob Hall of Edgewood said the Lottery Commission’s disregard of the will of lawmakers was intolerable.
Despite clearly violating state law, said Hall, officials at the Lottery Commission repeatedly denied they had the authority to deal with third-party couriers, including most recently at a Finance Committee hearing earlier this month. That changed, said Hall, when they learned that the Senate State Affairs Committee would be taking up his bill in a public hearing on Monday. Hours before the gavel was set to come down, lottery officials announced via press release that they would now be taking action against lottery abuses, something that Hall said amounted to a confession of guilt. “Those denials were outright lies,” said Hall of the commission’s earlier assertions. “What action did it take to allow the commissioners to finally find their authority? Nothing, except exposing their deception.”
Hall’s bill is relatively limited in scope; it makes buying a lotto ticket from a third party a class C misdemeanor and a class A misdemeanor for the third parties. Hall says he thinks the only bill that could actually address the corruption he sees at the Lottery Commission would be one that gets rid of it. “I strongly believe that the only legislative change that would have a meaningful impact and eliminate the organized crime syndicate embedded in the Texas government is legislation that completely and permanently abolishes the Lottery Commission,” he said.
Earlier this week, Governor Greg Abbott directed the Texas Rangers to investigate the April 2023 Texas Lotto in which a $95 million jackpot was awarded to a consortium that is alleged to have bought more than 28 million tickets, enough to cover all possible number combinations, to guarantee a win. He also asked them to look into a $83 million Texas Lotto jackpot won earlier this month.
In committee Thursday, the Senate Business and Commerce Committee took up a bill intended to prepare Texas to meet exploding electricity demands forecast for the near future. Weatherford Senator and committee vice chair Phil King said that we’ve never seen demand for power grow like this before. State regulators are forecasting that electric demand will rise from its 2024 peak of 86 GW to a staggering 150 GW by 2030, and that the state could face shortfalls as early as summer of 2027. This growth is being driven, said King, by power-hungry emerging industries like data centers and AI computing. “We want that business in Texas,” he said. “While this load growth is a strain on the ERCOT grid, it is also an excellent opportunity for the state of Texas so long as we manage it properly.” SB 6, by King, is a comprehensive approach to improve demand forecasting, ensure that large industrial consumers share the burden of load shed when required, manage deals providing exclusive capacity between generators and industry, and ways to ensure that the cost of transmission is borne by those who create those costs.
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