Forty-three states have lotteries and nearly a dozen of them have bandied about the idea of privatizing their lottery as a quick way to get some cold hard cash. That's a trend any way you look at it. While no governor has successfully done a deal yet, you can bet one of them will and when the first one goes -- watch out for the rest.

According to an article in the Richmond Times-Dispatch Virginia Delegate David E. Poisson (D-Loudoun) is the latest. In an era where tax increases are non-starters with most voters and many politicans don't want to cut spending, selling off lotteries becomes an inticing proposition. Privatization has been proposed in California, the District of Columbia, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, and Texas. This year the governors of Kentucky and Vermont raised the subject in their state of the state speeches.

States have long struggled with government-sponsored gambling. They like the additional revenue, but don't like the associated social issues such as gambling addiction and the troubling fact that most people who play the lottery earn less money and have less education than average citizens. In Virginia, the lottery is prohibited by law from airing ads that induce people to play; promotions may only be informational. When a private operator takes over from any state, they will likely introduce new, more popular games and use commercial marketing best practices, including technology to target likely gamblers, to generate more sales.

If lottery sell-offs follow the pattern of privatizing toll roads, the state that goes first may have it best. Only after the foreign-owned company that took over operations of the Skyway, a 7.8 mile stretch of underperforming tollroad, and drastically raised the tolls, other states began inserting language that limited the annual amount of toll increases in their deals with potential private operators. This will be important as the lottery privatization debate plays out because we're not talking chump change. California's lottery is valued at $14 to $37 billion and Vermont's could go for as much as a $1 billion. Former governor, Eliot Spitzer, estimated that $4 billion for some portion of the New York State Lottery could generate $200 million a year for higher education and $2 billion annually for primary and secondary education.