AUSTIN, Tex. — What a turnaround.
In the 2013 session the Texas House passed a bill aimed at abolishing the state lottery.
But after some soul-searching — mainly confronted with the fact the state would lose $1.1 billion a year for public education — some representatives who wanted to eliminate the Texas Lottery Commission reversed their vote, in essence resuscitating the game.
Now House members may go a step further.
On Tuesday the 150-member chamber will consider a bill that would allow winners of more than $1 million to remain anonymous. Under current Texas law they can't.
Rep. Ryan Guillen said the personal safety and peace of mind of lottery winners were key considerations for filing House Bill 108.
"This actually came to me from a constituent who told me she aspires to win the lottery but she lives on the border and she is afraid of somebody kidnapping her for a ransom" Guillen, D-Rio Grande City, said.
"But beyond that, we all have heard many stories about being hassled a great deal, folks who win the lottery are hassled" by people asking them for money, Guillen said. "This will give them the opportunity, the option, that if they want to be anonymous they can be anonymous."
Rep. John Kuempel, a member of the House Licensing & Administrative Procedures — the panel that screened HB 108 — likes Guillen's bill for similar reasons.
"The large part of it is public safety and personal safety," Kuempel, R-Seguin, said. "If I win $100 million I certainly want to remain anonymous...it is a personal right you should have."
Kuempel, who last year chaired a special committee that looked into the impact the abolition of the lottery would have on the state budget, emphasized the game is staying.
"If there is a bill (aimed at abolishing it) I don't know about it," he said.
Actually, Rep. Scott Sanford filed one but did not pursue it.
"We decided not to push on it because it would not have been successful," Sanford, R-McKinney, said. "The House isn't there yet."
Kuempel said the vote in the previous session was reversed the same day because even representatives opposed to gambling realized the severe impact the elimination of the Texas lottery would have on the public education budget.
Where would the state get the 1.1 billion it gets from the lottery? he asked.
Veteran Rep. John Smithee, R-Amarillo, who voted against the creation of the Texas Lottery in the early 1990s, said though he also doesn't expect a push to abolish the lottery in this session, it is something the Legislature should keep considering.
One of the possibilities is a gradual phase out, Smithee, Sanford and other lottery critics said.
"We've got to do it in way that doesn't hit the education budget real hard," Sanford said.
Rep. Four Price, R-Amarillo, said there was no major attempt to abolish the lottery this session because it was not a Sunset bill.
This was in reference to a review of every state agency, usually every 12 years. A joint legislative panel named the Sunset Advisory Commission recommends to the Legislature whether an agency it reviews should be abolished, overhauled or unchanged.
"There are a lot of opinions on how the commission operates and whether there should be a lottery at all," Price, vice chairman of the Sunset Commission, said.
But since the Lottery Commission was reviewed in the previous legislative cycle, no Sunset bill is expected this year or in the foreseeable future, Price explained.
But even if a regular bill to abolish the lottery advances, the near death of the Lottery Commission in 2013 showed — unless there is a well-thought plan to replace the revenue loss — the lawmakers won't mess with the state lottery anytime soon because, even in prosperous times, it's hard to replace lost revenue.
Moreover, pass or fail, the fact Guillen's bill has come this far is yet another indication — in the Texas Legislature — reliable revenue carries more weight than political ideology.
"Don't mess with Texas". Winners of more then $1 million to remain anonymous is highly welcome almost everywhere. A winner has so much swirling around their life this helps them remain sane and safe.
We should follow the example of the States that have laws protecting winners with anonymity i.e. Kansas, Maryland,Delaware, Ohio . And one other State I think.
Nice! Now how about the rest of the states!
Thank You hearsetrax for your input and help. The law should be called,"the Abraham Shakespeare law". If only he was still alive , may he rest in peace. Abraham was an illiterate but good natured person who won in Florida. Dee Dee Moore got her claws into his winnings then shot him twice in the chest. She is serving life without parole. Two lives wasted for no reason.
Why put a dollar figure on our choice/safety?. Just give us two boxes....check box1 if you want to stay anonymous, check box2 if you don't. Better still, keep everybody anonymous and let the hams and the hot dogs go out there and seek their own publicity.
Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh......Kudos state reps, for realizing the spring flowers are blooming and the coffee's-a-brewing. You have renewed my faith (just a smidge) that reasonableness and common sense still does exist in government officials. Thanks for doing your jobs and keeping the safety/security of the folks first and foremost.
I do favor remaining anonymous. But i also don't want to give up a part of my winnings for that right either.
As far as Texas gettin rid of the lottery i doubt it will happen anytime soon or ever.
Finally, a group of legislators with sense and who actually have the brains to think of the personal safety and well-being of the winners. I'm sure the lottery will lobby hard against this, since they view free publicity as more important than an individual's life, but I'm hopeful that this bill will pass. Kudos to them. Now, let's get the other states to follow suit.
I went to Texas' website and looked up this bill. Didn't see anything about an "anonymity fee" or cost that I think was mentioned elsewhere. I did see that your information could be released after 30 days if you took the prize in installments, though
That fee i was reffering to was in another post a while back where they would take 5% so you could keep your privacy. I think that is BS.
There are almost 27 million people in Texas, how man players were affected without anonymity?
If you live in Texas, please write to your representative in support of winners' right to anonymity.
"This actually came to me from a constituent who told me she aspires to win the lottery but she lives on the border and she is afraid of somebody kidnapping her for a ransom" Guillen, D-Rio Grande City, said.
"But beyond that, we all have heard many stories about being hassled a great deal, folks who win the lottery are hassled" by people asking them for money, Guillen said. "This will give them the opportunity, the option, that if they want to be anonymous they can be anonymous."
While I agree with the above statements, it is not only criminals that winners have to worry about.
When people win a large amount, and it is known, they can come under enormous pressure from family members to "help" them.
It can take a strong person to say "NO", and before long the prize money is spend, with the winner's long-term financial security gone with it.
As it is very few people, why not give them the right to anonymity? What is the point of forcing winners to go public?
Texas should adopt the British Lottery policy. Winners have the right to anonymity, but they also get financial advice. When people win big, some may not be able to manage it and could do with independent professional financial advice.
As one of the world’s leading lottery operators, Camelot sets global standards when it comes to looking after winners. It offers an unparalleled level of professional support to help and advise new winners throughout this life-changing experience, as well as a unique aftercare service.
As well as being a time of extreme excitement and happiness, suddenly winning a substantial sum of money can be an overwhelming and emotional experience for many people – but support from Camelot begins as soon as a winner makes a claim on a prize.
For UK National Lottery prizes over £50,000, our player services team is able to pay them in the comfort of their own home, or alternatively they can choose to have their prize validated at one of our prize payout centres.
For winners over £500,000, a private banking representative can visit them at home to discuss additional services on offer to winners with new-found wealth. We also arrange for a panel of independent legal and financial experts to visit winners of over £500,000 to offer impartial advice and practical guidelines.
One of the most important decisions for new winners to make is whether to opt to go public or remain anonymous. If a winner decides to talk publicly about their win, Camelot’s PR team will organise a press conference and handle all media interest on their behalf, removing the anxiety that can accompany talking about a big win.
If they have requested to remain anonymous, Camelot takes its obligations and duty of care to protect winners’ privacy very seriously. Unless a winner agrees to take full publicity and signs an agreement to that effect, no information about them can be released by Camelot into the public domain.
We have a dedicated team of winners’ advisers who look after all our major jackpot winners. They remain a source of support and advice for as long as a winner needs – often remaining in touch years after hitting the jackpot.
I am abivalent about this, on one hand I understand the desire for anonymity, but on the other hand there are legitimate circumstances where hiding the winner's identity could lead to someone getting away with fraud. Someone could have stolen a ticket, cheated a partner etc etc out of their rightful winnings and that's not right. What if someone had hit you years ago in a DUI accident and paralyzed you and destroyed your life and now a few years later they won $50 million, should you not be compensated? Most people want anonymity because they assume they will be on the winning side, almost no one ever considers that they might be on the side of the guy getting screwed over.
If you win the lottery and want to keep it a secret, you've got to trust.
In other words, let someone else face the publicity.
We'll probably never know who bought the $24 million Lotto Texas jackpot ticket July 28 at a southwest Houston Kroger store because the winner claimed the prize through the MDDSS Revocable Trust.
Manfred Sternberg, a trustee for the Houston-based trust, represented the winner Wednesday at the ceremonial check presentation.
Under Texas law, a lottery winner cannot remain anonymous, but the winner doesn't have to be an individual. It can be a trust, Texas Lottery Commission spokeswoman Kelly Cripe said.
Information was not immediately available on how common it is for winners to form trusts before claiming their prizes, Cripe said.
Another Houston lotto winner used the same tactic in May 2010 when he collected his lump-sum payout of $48.8 million through the MAED Trust after a delay caused by a photocopier snafu that blackened the front of the ticket.
The man, who has yet to go public, purchased a winning ticket worth $76 million the previous October at the H-E-B Pantry in Alvin.
The MDDSS Revocable Trust also selected the immediate payout option rather than 25 annual payments, making the prize worth about $18.9 million before taxes, according to the commission.
Remaining anonymous can be a smart move for people who suddenly become very rich, a financial expert said.
Susan Bradley, a Florida certified financial planner who started the Sudden Money Institute, said it's a good thing Texas allows winners to keep quiet about striking it rich.
"Some states require a photo op," Bradley said Friday from her Florida office. "It's hard enough to adapt to having this kind of money - the responsibilities, the choices. It's very stressful. If there's less publicity, it makes it a little easier."
Venom, while you point out concerns of something that might happen. That's where you would normally get an atty. and have them do the due diligence anyway. Fraud and the DUI and theft are all crimes that are public and can be prosecuted. The prosecutor does not reveal anyone's financial status to the victim unless it is part of the discovery to be used in that case. As far as a DUI and the paralysis, Civil tort claims have a 2 year statute of limitations to them and almost all crimes have a statute of limitations. IF you were a victim of the above mentioned concerns you would never hear if the offender inherited money from a rich relative of from an insurance policy.
Setting rules in place for the possibilities of the above mentioned issues is not the lottery commission's authority. Collecting the money and issuing out funds for being a participant with a winning ticket is. Having anonymity is reasonable request for anyone that takes the time to purchase a ticket legally. What they have done before or after that transaction is nobodies business unless it is part of public record as you described above.
I don't know about you but I like my personal business being personal. What I have accumulated in the past or in the future should not be subject to someone having the right to know as a part of general public knowledge or under the guise of "you might be an unethical or immoral person". Just my 2 cents
CDanaT, excellent response. I was going to reply on pretty much the same points, so I'm really glad someone else gets how false both the fraud argument and lawsuit rights are.
People seem to be under the misconception that just because winners aren't pimped out to the media that the lottery will stop doing due diligence when it comes to combating stolen tickets and other cases of fraud.
As for the lawsuit scenario, it doesn't hold water. If someone injures you, you're given a judgement based on your pain, suffering, lost wages, medical expenses etc. If the person cannot pay, then liens can be placed on their property and future earnings until the awarded amount is paid in full. So it's not as if you're going to get screwed over just because that person wins the lottery in some distant future.
CDanaT,
Thanks for shedding light on this.
And yes, the lottery commission is still going to do due diligence on any winning jackpot ticket to be sure the real winner is holding the ticket.
I agree with mypiemaster that there should be no dollar threshold. Anonymity should be available to all winners. If they insist on the million dollar threshold I'd rather they reword it to 'winners of one million or more' rather than 'more than a million'.
Do you know for an actual fact how deep the lottery actually goes to find out if fraud was committed, if someone has judgments etc etc, in other states, counties and whatnot? If someone was allowed to claim their prize under the guise of a trust wouldn't that also allow them to circumvent any judgments and so on? You forget one of the essential elements for getting caught committing fraud is that the person it is happening to would need to know. If you were able to stay anonymous then it's pretty <snip> hard for the person you screwed over to make a claim of fraud if they did not know you won. How many times have you seen a situation where a boyfriend and girlfriend played the lottery together and then one of them decides they are going to try to screw the other one out of their share of the winnings, or even a quasi lottery pool? Many times, that's what.
Pretty sure civil tort claims in my state have a 7 year statute of limitations also, two years seems really low. Also when someone dies the estate goes through probate and it is published so not quite sure about your claims that if someone dies I would not hear about the other person inheriting money or assets.
Seems to me that the fear-mongering stance of guaranteed fraud is moot unless someone can prove to me that
Unless someone can prove those 3 points, then the fraud argument is nothing but conjecture and therefore moot. What isn't conjecture is that every single lottery winner whose name has been publicized has suffered from some form of harassment. Many have been forced to move whether they wanted to or not. Many others have been threatened with lawsuits or subjected to the not-so-subtle threats of bodily injury to themselves or family. As such, it should be a right to say yay or nay to having the entire world be privy to one's new net worth.
To recklessly endanger the player by requiring them to release their name should be illegal.
Sooner or later the terrorists will start kidnaping winners for ransom and homeland security will probably tell the relatives not to pay it.
Anonymity should be required.
If the player wants to broadcast their win all over and be a big shot then that would be the players problem.
Good for TX. not much chance of Jersey doing this, so I'll just keep on going over the Delaware Memorial Bridge.
I doubt Jersey cares about the loss of the ticket sale to me cause they will still get the 10.8 % tax
and they get part of the toll when I use the DMB.
I was just reading on another website (which will go nameless, from me anyway) that it is against this bill because of the chance that the TLC could claim there is a jackpot winner when there really isn't, and just take the money, (this would only work for a Texas lottery game, not MM or PB).
On one hand this is something I haven't thought of, but.......I really don't think a state lottery commission would actually steal a jackpot or commit fraud. If they did such a thing and got caught, it would immediately and forever end the lottery. To me, that risk just doesn't make sense.
At any rate, I'm rather ambivalent about anonymity, because with sensible precautions a jackpot winner can head off unwanted trouble/beggars.