MuniLand

In the media appearance above, Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane announces that the contract drawn up by Governor Tom Corbett to privatize the state’s lottery management “contravenes the Pennsylvania Constitution and is not statutory authorized.” Translation: Pop- Bam- Take that, governor – You don’t have the power that you think you have.

This is one of democracy’s more glorious moments.

I wrote in early December around when Corbett’s deal to privatize the lottery became public:

There is a lot of darkness and a web of connections around the efforts to privatize the Pennsylvania state lottery. Tom Corbett, the governor of Pennsylvania, is attempting to force through the privatization before the legislature comes back into session in January and has a chance to review the terms of the 20-30 year deal. Democrats are howling.

It was a fatal mistake for Corbett to take a public asset, with expected cash flows of $70 billion over the next 20 years, and give its control to a British firm with no legislative oversight. It was crony politics and it failed.

If public assets are to be given to private interests, it must happen by daylight. These deals that often last decades must be thoroughly examined. The rule of law must prevail.

David Fillman, with union of #PALottery workers, says public mgmt could be more lucrative than private. “And we don’t have a profit motive.’

— Marywilson (@Marywilson) January 14, 2013

A big brawl is going on in Pennsylvania over the way that Republican Governor Tom Corbett has been maneuvering to privatize the state’s successful public lottery. The governor held negotiations in secret for months before announcing in November, 2012 that he had chosen a single bidder, the UK’s Camelot Global Services, to be awarded a 20-25 year contract to operate the lottery.

This announcement, made while the Pennsylvania legislature was in recess, was intended to move the governor’s process to conclusion before the legislature came back into session. Public outrage caused Corbett to initially delay the contract, but in a move that seemed to show contempt for the state’s legislators, his office gave Camelot a “Notice of Award” late last Friday; just before the Senate Finance Committee was to hold a hearing on the details of the contract.

Nothing makes me happier than to see law as the weapon of choice in a fight between public officials. There is a big battle underway in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania over the efforts of the governor to privatize the lottery, currently a big source of revenue for the state’s senior citizen programs. I wrote last week about Pennsylvania’s sweetheart lottery privatization deal:

There is a lot of darkness and a web of connections around the efforts to privatize the Pennsylvania state lottery. Tom Corbett, the governor of Pennsylvania, is attempting to force through the privatization before the legislature comes back into session in January and has a chance to review the terms of the 20-30 year deal. Democrats are howling.

One Democrat with a lot of legal authority is howling away, and he has essentially blocked the governor’s efforts to sell the highly profitable lottery to a British firm. The Patriot News writes:

There is a lot of darkness and a web of connections around the efforts to privatize the Pennsylvania state lottery. Tom Corbett, the governor of Pennsylvania, is attempting to force through the privatization before the legislature comes back into session in January and has a chance to review the terms of the 20-30 year deal. Democrats are howling.

The Patriot News tells one side of the story:

Calling the administration’s pursuit of this potential deal “too secretive,” House Democratic Leader Frank Dermody, D-Allegheny, urged Corbett to be more transparent about his plan for privatizing the lottery that he said would cost older Pennsylvanians hundreds of millions of dollars in lost funding for services over the life of the 20-year contract.

“Now, when there is no General Assembly in session, he is trying to hand-deliver a lucrative contract to the lone bidder with no hearings, no legislative approval and no public scrutiny. This whole thing stinks,” Dermody said.