New Lottery Game Proposal Comes Up With All Lemons

SACRAMENTO —  A newly devised electronic game designed to boost California’s interest in the lottery has been shelved after a local district attorney likened it to an illegal slot machine and threatened prosecution if it is tested in his jurisdiction.

Joanne McNabb, communications manager for the California State Lottery, said an advertising and promotion campaign for the new game, which was to be called Pronto, has been canceled and plans to test-market it in the Sacramento area have been postponed indefinitely.

“We’re delaying everything,” she said.

Sacramento Dist. Atty. Steve White said the commission’s decision was prompted by a warning from his office that the game in his opinion could constitute the use of an illegal slot machine and he would take action to enforce the law against such devices.

White said he issued the warning after lottery officials made a slide presentation of the new game to his office as they prepared to launch the test.

“To go ahead and have an illegal slot machine would constitute a misdemeanor,” said White, who until recently was a chief assistant in the state attorney general’s office.

Likewise, David Lind, legal adviser to Sacramento Sheriff Glen Craig, said his office reached the same conclusion after they saw the slide demonstration.

“We all viewed the presentation and all of us came to the same conclusion that there was some question,” he said.

Both attorneys said they believe that the game would be illegal because it would have required the use of a computer terminal and would have provided instant payoffs.

“The Lottery Commission has been very cooperative and has made it clear they don’t want to do anything that is legally questionable,” White said.

McNabb declined to divulge any specifics about the game other than to confirm that there would have been instant payoffs. She said it would have used existing terminals in bars, restaurants and elsewhere that are now used for the Lotto game.

Pronto would have been the third type of lottery system to be used in California. The lottery has already instituted a scratch-off game and the computerized Lotto game.

McNabb said Pronto would have been unlike any other lottery game in the nation. She said it was devised by the lottery staff as a result of marketing research into what players actually want to play.

She said the agency had proceeded with plans for the new game believing that it was legal. Although the attorney general’s office has yet to respond to a request for a formal legal opinion, she said Lottery officials had concluded after informal discussions with that office that there would be no legal problems with it.

“We have been aware there were some legal considerations but we had no reason to believe there was a problem with it,” she said. “Just in the last few days we have heard from the local officials that they didn’t think it would work. Until then no one had voiced any problems.”

Alan B. Ashby, a spokesman for Atty. Gen. John K. Van de Kamp, said his office, which received the request for the opinion in late March, is in the process of preparing a reply.

It was learned, however, that an internal memorandum written by the attorney general’s criminal division and circulated March 15 questioned the legality of the new game.

McNabb said the costs to the state would be minimal if the lottery is not permitted to proceed with the new game. She said several other games are also under consideration as a result of the marketing research and they would be used in its place.

White, meanwhile, said he would not make a final judgment on the legality of the game until he has viewed the attorney general’s opinion. Even then, however, he said he doubted he would change his decision.