A new type of lottery fever is spreading in the Tennessee state Capitol.
The Tennessee Lottery has been up and running for less than a month, but lawmakers of all persuasions - from avid supporters to consistent opponents - are looking to make changes.
More than 150 bills relating to the lottery have been introduced since the General Assembly returned to Nashville last month.
The Lottery Oversight Committee, composed of nine members each from the House and Senate, last week began sifting through the bills. They encompass a range of issues, from taxation to charity duck races to gambling addiction hot lines.
"There are some things we need to address, and if they don't have a major financial impact on the current program ... I think we'll be, as a whole, pretty comfortable with those," said Rep. Chris Newton, a committee member and sponsor of the lottery laws in the House.
The bills most likely to pass, according to Newton, include legislation that would equalize lottery-funded scholarship eligibility requirements among traditional and home-schooled students.
Currently, home schoolers must have a 23 ACT score to qualify, while traditional students need only a 19.
Under current law, revenue generated by the games goes toward college scholarships for qualifying Tennessee students.
A proposed bill would allow students who live in Tennessee but attend out-of-state high schools to qualify for scholarships. Most of these students are forced to go to schools across the state line because there are no Tennessee high schools near where they live, sponsor Rep. Joe Fowlkes, D-Cornersville, has said.
Some legislators also are trying to reignite debate on whether lottery winnings should be subject to state taxation.
A bill sponsored by Sen. Jeff Miller and Rep. Dewayne Bunch, both Republicans from Cleveland, would make any prizes over $100,000 subject to the Hall Income Tax - something that would be unique to Tennessee, according to lottery chief Rebecca Paul.
"That's a public policy decision, but no state that has a lottery but no income tax has a tax on lottery winnings," Paul told oversight committee members last week.
Several bills relating to gambling addiction also are up for debate, including two sponsored by Sen. Jim Bryson, R-Franklin, to require the lottery to advertise gambling addiction assistance and warnings on all tickets.
In a similar vein, Sen. Thelma Harper, a Nashville Democrat, is pushing a bill to require the lottery to set aside money for gambling education and treatment. But that likely won't go far since the state attorney general ruled last year it is unconstitutional to use lottery funds for anything other than what is detailed in the law.
A majority of the bills listed on the committee's inaugural calendar - 91 of the 154 to be exact - concern charity raffles such as the duck races held by the Boys and Girls Clubs of Knoxville until they were declared unconstitutional.
When the constitution was amended in 2002 to allow a state lottery, voters also authorized the Legislature to let nonprofit organizations hold lottery-type fund-raisers.
A bill already has been filed to set up these dvents, but organizations ranging from the St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis to Oktoberfest in Germantown to the Sportsmen Wildlife Foundation in Knoxville are hedging their bets by finding sponsors for legislation relating specifically to their interests.
Rep. Harry Tindell, sponsor of the charity gaming bill in the House, says those won't be dealt with until his legislation completes the bill process.
"If this bill is successful, we won't need all of those little bills," said Tindell, D-Knoxville. "But if this bill doesn't pass, I think some people will want to go back to those."
Other bills under consideration would strengthen minority participation requirements, widen public access rights to lottery corporation records and change the scholarship requirements to receive an award.
Despite the influx of legislation, state Sen. Steve Cohen, who pushed for 20 years for a state lottery, said he doesn't want to see many changes to the law.
He pointed to the Georgia Lottery - whose statute Tennessee copied for its own games - as an example of what can go wrong.
Lawmakers in Georgia, spurred by the program's _popularity, expanded the scope of the games many times in its 11-year history. That created a costly program that has grown faster than lottery receipts.
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