Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell has made no secret of his desire to get Virginia out of the booze business — but the state-run lottery might be a different story. Fred Malek, the chairman of his government reform commission, recently broached the idea of privatizing the Virginia Lottery, which provided $430 million in proceeds for state schools in the last fiscal year.
McDonnell acknowledged during a recent radio appearance that there’s been “some discussion” about privatizing the Virginia Lottery. Yet, while he is pushing hard to privatize Virginia’s state-run liquor stores, McDonnell was much cooler to the idea of giving up control over the lottery.
“My view is that there are certain functions that can probably only be done by government … police, fire … but there’s some other things that are not necessarily proprietary to government that a commercial venture can do as well,” he said. “The test is this: If you can get better quality and save money in the private sector, you ought to do it. If you can’t, you ought to keep it in the government, and so that’s really our test — we haven’t looked seriously at the lottery yet, other states have, and so it’s just one more thing we’re evaluating along the way.”
