Sale of State Lottery Tickets at Courthouse Approved

After a brief bout with its collective conscience, the San Diego County Board of Supervisors voted narrowly Tuesday to approve the sale of state lottery tickets in the downtown County Courthouse.

The board voted, 3-2, with Paul Eckert and Susan Golding dissenting, to amend the county’s contract with Muriel Goehring, who runs the concession stand in the courthouse lobby at 220 W. Broadway.

But Goehring’s victory, which she said would allow county employees to purchase lottery tickets “without wasting a lot of county time looking all over town,” came only after four of the five board members said originally that they opposed the idea.

Goehring’s request started out on the board’s “consent agenda”--the list of items the supervisors are expected to approve routinely without discussion.

But after Eckert asked simply that his vote on the item be recorded as “no,” Supervisors Leon Williams, George Bailey and Golding followed suit, saying they too were against allowing gambling--legal or otherwise--in the courthouse.

“The courthouse is no place for playing games,” Eckert said. “The concession stand is there to serve the people in giving them something they might need--a cookie or a cigarette--in the transaction of courthouse business.”

Golding added: “The halls of justice require a certain dignity. I don’t think selling lottery tickets adds to that dignity.”

But Supervisor Brian Bilbray urged his colleagues to disregard their personal feelings about the lottery and approve Goehring’s request, under which the county will receive a penny from each $1 lottery ticket sold.

“Regardless of how this board feels about the issue, the fact is it is a legal activity in this state,” Bilbray said. “This is not the place to make moral decisions on this issue.”

Bilbray added that preventing the sale of lottery tickets at the county-owned building would be little different from banning the sale of cigarettes or bubble gum.

That argument apparently swayed Bailey, who changed his mind and sided with Bilbray.

“I would rather have employees buying their tickets there than in the neighborhood bar,” Bailey said.

Williams joined Bilbray and Bailey in approving the contract after County Counsel Lloyd Harmon assured the board that the county could not be held liable for taking a person’s last dollar in exchange for a lottery ticket. Williams thought the liability issue might be the same as that for a bartender who sells a customer a drink after the person is already intoxicated.