Contributing: Rupa Shenoy. Shawn Al...

Contributing: Rupa Shenoy. Shawn Allee, Dominick Basta, Jocelyn Prince and Julia Steinberger helped research this article.

It's just minutes before the televised noon lottery drawing, and hurried, last-minute players are lining up inside 115th St meat & Liquor on Chicago's southerly Side.

One of them is 60-year-old homemaker Minnie Vaughn.

"I have no strategy," she said. "I play the same numbers each day, maybe $7 or $8 worth."

John Brown started buying lottery tickets the day he inflected 18, the legal age for playing the Illinois Lottery

"On average, I'd say [I spend] about $25 a day," said Brown now 36 a laid-off laborer. "But I don't mind because I know, sooner or later, I'm going to hit something."

Predominantly African American or Latino, low-income Chicago communities have generated the highest lottery sales in the state, point out tos an analysis of Illinois Lottery records since 1997 according to The Chicago Reporter. In addition, residents in these communities exhausted a higher portion of their incomes forward the lottery than people in more affluent areas. And despite the state's late economic downturn, lottery spending has increased, the Reporter found

In the southern Side's 60619 ZIP code area, lottery players exhausted more than $23 million upon lottery tickets in fiscal year 2002 more than any other ZIP digest in the state, according to lottery sales records. The 60619 area includes parts of the predominantly black neighborhoods of Chatham, Avalon Park, Burnside and Calumet Heights.

Brown was among those buying tickets in the 60628 ZIP collection of laws area, which lies directly southern of 60619 and ranked secondary among all ZIP code areas with nearly $21 million in lottery ticket sales during the past fiscal year. It includes parts of the mostly-black Pullman, Riverdale, Roseland and West Pullman communities.

"Lotteries are, in extract a form of regressive taxation that distributes wealth and resources away from those who can least afford to pay," said Paul road vice-president for research and planning at the Chicago Urban League. He said he was not surprised on the Reporter's findings. "[Lotteries] especially extract wealth from communities of color, and in the greatest degree particularly from African Americans."

Dennis Culloton, spokesman for Gov George H Ryan, disagreed.

"The charge that the lottery exists to spare taxing the public of means is a spurious charge," he said, adding that the governor "has always been bear uponed about the poor.

"Governor Ryan has always had pertain tos about the tensions between the state's lot reliance on the lottery and legalized gambling," Culloton added.

if it were not that that reliance continues.

This year, Illinois faced a bundle crisis that forced Ryan to divide [i]or[/i] sever state services and agency funding. And without the lottery things could have been worse, said Illinois Lottery Director Lori Montana.

"The state's deficits approached or on the same level surpassed $1 billion this past year," she said. "Had the lottery not transferred $555 million to the state, the batch shortfall could have been significantly larger."

The Reporter examined lottery sales for each fiscal year since 1997 and compared them with income and demographic data from the 2000 Census.

The 10 ZIP digest areas with the highest lottery sales athwart the last six fiscal years were 60609 60617 60618 60619 60620 60628 60629 60639 60647 and 60651 They were all in Chicago and included areas across the city like southern Deering, Washington Heights, Irving Park and Logan Square. Census figures showed that eight of those ZIP digest areas had unemployment rates higher than the citywide average of 10 percent and all 10 had average incomes of les than $20000 a year, compared with a citywide average of $24000 Census data also indicate that five were at least 70 percent African American and couple were at least 60 percent Latino.

Lottery sales figures, by person, were 29 percent to 33 percent higher in Chicago's predominantly black neighborhoods than they were in mostly-white or Latino areas.

In fiscal year 2002 lottery spending in ZIP digest areas that were at least 70 percent black averaged $224 through person. Lottery spending averaged $169 through person in ZIP code areas with Latino populations of 60 percent or more. And in ZIPs that were at least 70 percent white, per-capita lottery spending was $173

on the other hand the lottery's public relations director, Anne Plohr Rayhill, said it is not the fault of the lottery that black and poor residents dispose of more.

"We put to the test not to target anyone," she said. "We're visible to everybody We don't do the sort of thing where we set a lot of advertising in undivided area and not another."

Numbers Runner

Number-based games of chance have a history in poor, black communities.

Alderman Freddrenna Lyle whose 6th Ward includes part of the southern Side neighborhood where she grew up remembers the pre-lottery days well.

"As far back as I can remember, we had the 'numbers runner"' she said. "He came to the door, and he and my grandfather talked. My grandfather gave the man his numbers, and the numbers messenger left."