By CRAIG FORD | Alabama House of Representatives

There’s no doubt that momentum for the lottery is building in Alabama. A public opinion poll, paid for by the House and Senate Republican Caucuses, found that 62 percent of likely Republican primary voters support the lottery, and 59 percent even support expanding gambling in Alabama.

These strong numbers show why two Republican state legislators, Rep. Alan Harper and Sen. Jim McClendon, recently put out their own lottery bill.

At first, this would seem like an encouraging turn of events. Finally, after decades of Republican legislators fighting the lottery, there seems to be enough support from both parties to actually let the people vote.

But what if the real goal isn’t to pass a lottery but to kill it?

If the lottery fails a statewide vote, we won’t get to vote on it again in our lifetimes. This is a one-shot deal. If the people of Alabama reject the lottery again, Republican legislators will say, “We let the people vote and they voted it down. It’s time to move on.”

That’s why the lottery we put in front of the people this November has to be a proposal the people can actually support. And that’s where the Harper-McClendon bill has a problem.

When the lottery failed in 1999, it was because the bill was complicated and included too much pork spending. The people voted that lottery down even though they elected Don Seigelman governor on a platform of passing a lottery, and even though numerous polls showed overwhelming support for a lottery. They voted it down because the bill was wasteful and because they simply didn’t trust the legislature.

Now look at the bill proposed by Rep. Harper and Sen. McClendon. Their bill has no specifics in it. It doesn’t say how the lottery will be run or how the proceeds will be spent.

Will the money be used for education? Will it be used for prisons and Medicaid? We don’t know.

What they have proposed is a “blank check lottery.” They want you to give the government the authority to create the lottery, and then trust the government to figure out all the details later on.

And therein lies the problem.

These same legislators who are now asking you to trust the government with the lottery money have spent the last three-and-a-half decades telling us that we can’t trust the government.

Have they flip-flopped on their most basic political beliefs? I don’t think so.

Look at their history on gambling.

Not only have they spent the last 20 years fighting the lottery and gambling, they spent $9 million of the taxpayers’ money doing it!

Are these legislators completely reversing themselves on the lottery after that many years and all that money?