West Virginia Leading In Gambling Share Of State Budget

In the United States, most individual states are moving towards gambling as a way to help balance their budget. States that already allowed gambling are expanding the industry, and states without gambling are now changing laws to allow it.

In West Virginia, they rank second to only Nevada in the importance that gambling money has in the state budget. Nine percent of the state budget comes from gambling revenue in West Virginia.

The state runs a lottery, and also receives revenue from four racetracks that combined have almost 20,000 slot machines. Nevada, at 13.4 percent was the only state in 2006 with a higher share stake then West Virginia.

West Virginia also leads the way in budget reliance on gambling revenue. It grew by 6.4 percent between 1998 and 2006, according to a report released by the Rockefeller Institute of Government.

"From a fiscal perspective, state-sponsored gambling now resembles a blue-chip stock reliability generating large amounts of cash, but no longer promising dramatic growth in revenue," said the report.

One of the reasons it is believed that West Virginia leads the way in the gambling share revenue is because they are attracting many customers from other states. "A lot of our revenues come from people who travel to West Virginia to gamble," said Deputy Revenue Secretary Mark Muchow.

June 22, 2008
Posted By April Gardner
Staff Editor, CasinoGamblingWeb.com
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