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A slots parlor at the Mohegan Sun Pocono casino. State lawmakers and the Wolf administration are poised to extract even more revenue from gambling. (Times-Tribune File)

State government leaders long have gambled with the states financial health. They rolled snake eyes, for example, when they vastly increased public pension benefits in 2001 without a mechanism to pay for it. So there is symmetry in their current efforts to make more gambling the answer to the financial problems that their own wayward bets have produced.

The state government has a systemic deficit of about $3 billion. That is the accumulated effect of lawmakers refusing to modernize state tax policy and pretending at meaningful pension reform all for fear of the political risk.

But for politicians, there is no risk to expanding gambling, taxes on which are collected by third parties casinos, racetracks and lottery agents rather than directly by the state.

Its no wonder, then, that lawmakers already are pondering casino-operated internet gambling and fantasy sports gambling. And, during budget hearings this week, state lottery Director Drew Svitko told legislators that the administration wants to put lottery games online.

What were not talking about is just selling our existing product online ... as much as were talking about selling a new type of product, an interactive, engaging, more relevant product to a different audience, he said.

Unlike many past gambling proposals, this one at least is honest. At the beginning, advocates pressed casino gambling as a means to capture dollars that Pennsylvanians already were losing in Atlantic City. The objective was not to create new gamblers, they said, but to capture existing gamblers.

That, of course, was baloney. The reason for the interest in internet gambling is that even existing gamblers get old. Some even die. To capture new generations of gamblers, the enterprise must venture into cyberspace, where younger people live on their multiple devices. The administration admits, at least, that the new initiative is aimed at a different audience.

Pennsylvania casinos already produce more state revenue than in any state other than Nevada. Gamblers lost $3.21 billion to Pennsylvania casinos in the 2016 calendar year, $1.39 billion of which went to Harrisburg in taxes.

In the 2015-2016 fiscal year, the state lottery sold a record $4.13 billion worth of tickets, paid out a record $2.63 billion in prizes and turned over $1.12 billion to the treasury.

Yet that is not enough for gambling-happy legislators who embrace indirect taxes while ignoring the social dysfunction that it fosters (note the frequent reports of arrests of people who steal from employers and civic groups to cover their legally accrued gambling debts).

Pennsylvania has enough gambling to satisfy old and new gamblers alike. Lawmakers and the administration should stop being croupiers and start working to reform state tax policy, fix the pension systems and foster the economic growth needed to resolve the states crisis.

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Gambling is state policy - Scranton Times-Tribune