SACRAMENTO -- The California State Lottery, the outcome of a gambling supply company's successful courtship of voters, completes a healthy first year Friday with the promise of a long life.
With ticket sales of 3 million daily, California's lottery is the biggest in the country, and those who manage it say it is destined to become the biggest in the world.
But many prominent elected officials remain ambivalent about the lottery. Republican Gov. George Deukmejian, for instance, initially opposed it and still worries that the state is promoting gambling.
The first gaily colored lottery tickets went on sale Oct. 3, 1985, at 20,500 retail stores throughout the Golden State. Since then, Californians have shelled out $2.03 billion to buy tickets at $1 a piece and scratch off the silver coatings to find the lucky numbers.
About eight of nine tickets sold are losers. Odds of winning the top scratch-off prize of $100,000 are just one in 961,000. Only one in 79 million tickets snags the ultimate prize, the 'Big Spin' jackpot.
The lottery's Big Spin television show -- in which holders of tickets drawn from special pools compete for the progressive jackpot - enjoys respectable ratings.
An audience believed to have numbered in the millions saw Eve Spencer, the cancer-stricken wife of a freelance writer, spin her way to a $15.22 million fortune June 22 -- a prize being paid out at the rate of about $608,000 a year.
That was the biggest prize so far in the lottery, which has given away nearly $1 billion. More than 60 people have won at least $1 million.
The Big Spin has provided fascinating insights into California's population. Finalists have ranged from 18 to 89 and have included immigrants from throughout the world.
The second- and third-largest jackpots to date -- $10.085 million and $6.78 million -- were won by immigrants from Mexico. A third won $1 million but federal agents quickly pounced on him as an illegal alien and he had to take his money back to Mexico.
Next month, prizes will get even larger after the lottery introduces electronic lotto, in which players try to guess six numbers in a row that will be drawn from a pool of 49. The odds of picking six matching numbers will be one in 13.9 million.
The record prize for a state-run lotto game in the United States is $41 million, divided among three winners in the New York Lottery in August 1985. In California, with its larger population, officials say a $50 million payoff is possible.
At the end of the 1985-86 fiscal year June 30, the lottery had earned $690 million in nine months for public schools -- about 39 percent of the gross of $1.76 billion, said lottery spokesman John Schade.
By law, at least 34 percent of the proceeds must go to schools, no more than 50 percent for prizes and 16 percent for costs.
The Lottery Commission stresses the lottery's contribution to education but that emphasis causes some legislators and educators to wince. They point out the $690 million is only about 3 percent of the state's education budget of nearly $20 billion.
'We're lulling the California electorate into believing the fiscal crisis in public education is fixed by the lottery,' says Democratic Assemblyman Sam Farr.
The state budget anticipates about $70 a student in 1986-87 from the lottery. State schools chief Bill Honig says it will help California schools, now $49 a student below the national average, catch up with other states.
Also concerning lawmakers is the lottery's close relationship with Scientific Games Inc., the Georgia gambling supply company that sponsored the lottery initiative approved by voters in November 1984.
Scientific Games, a subsidiary of Bally, the slot machine maker, spent about $3 million to round up 500,000 voter signatures to get the initiative on the ballot and push for passage.
Voters rejected a lottery initiative in 1964 but changed their minds in the past 20 years; the 1984 lottery proposal won by 58 percent.
Lawyers for Scientific Games carefully wrote into the initiative some requirements for the ticket and equipment suppliers that only Scientific Games was in a position to meet at the time.
Partly as a result, Scientific Games won the first three contracts to supply lottery tickets and the computer programs needed to operate the games. The contracts have totaled $61.7 million. The most recent one for about $20 million was awarded Sept. 13, although another supplier offered a lower price.
The lottery staff defended the latest award by saying Scientific Games offered better ticket security and other services.
