Come November, the Bay State will have a new gambling czar to oversee our powerhouse state lottery.

Both former Democratic National Committee chief and local business magnate Steve Grossman and his Republican opponent Karyn Polito, a state representative from Shrewsbury, are pledging change as they battle for the state treasurer’s job.

But it appears to be change with a lower-case “c.” And for developers interested in building anything in Greater Boston, especially housing, this has to be a concern.

The Massachusetts State Lottery provides a crucial $900 million a year in state aid for cities and towns, a remarkable success story.

The danger here is stagnation, with the potential for lottery revenue to peak and decline over the next few years, putting increasing pressure on cash-strapped cities and towns.

And as local leaders get stressed about less money to deal with rising education costs, doors will slam shut on everything from new condo projects to subdivisions full of single-family homes – more housing means more children, which means more stress on already-burdened schools.

The job of overseeing the $4.5 billion lottery is up for grab thanks to Tim Cahill’s decision to move on from the treasurer’s job and pursue his quixotic quest for the governor’s office.

Separate But Equal

While Grossman and Polito are separated by the typical D/R differences, when it comes to really shaking things up, they have a lot more in common than is first apparent.

Both are dead set against privatizing the lottery – even as Illinois and other major lottery players push ahead with plans to boost revenues by bringing in the private sector.

For Grossman, the opposition to privatization is not all that surprising – it’s a bugaboo in a generally liberal, blue state like ours.

Polito’s opposition is harder to figure out – after all, she is a Republican.

OK, it may not be a panacea, but I wonder what a private operator who knows its stuff might do in a gambling-happy state.

Certainly Cahill and crew have done all right – lottery revenues are rising again. But how much of that is the fact that Bay State residents are just nuts about gambling? We spend more on lottery tickets per capita than any other state, and then for good measure pump a billion or so each year into Connecticut’s casinos and Rhode Island’s slot parlors.

“I don’t think that is a good idea for us,” said Grossman, who slams privatization as a “short-term windfall.”

But if privatization is off the table, then that makes it even more important for the Bay State’s next lottery czar to become a leader, not a follower, as state lotteries across the country rush to do more and more online.

It’s complicated of course, with the federal government banning gamblers here in the U.S. from taking part in free-wheeling, Vegas-style betting sites.

But there are loopholes in the law for state lotteries, and lots of room to do all sorts of things online, even if it falls short playing a virtual slot machine.

However, as other states have forged ahead, Massachusetts lottery officials have been smugly quiet.

And while both Grossman and Polito talk a good talk about being “open” to taking the lottery online, I am not sure that is going to change much after November.

Frankly, neither could offer me any examples of new Internet products or offerings they would have the Massachusetts State Lottery roll out.

“We ought to position Massachusetts to take full advantage of that and to be a leader,” Grossman said. “We want to make sure we are winners in that environment and the winners are the ones who plan for the future.”

That said, Grossman gets credit for being the bolder of the two, pushing plans to increase lottery profits – and by extension state aids for cities and towns – from just over $900 million now to over a billion.

He offers up two pretty common sense ways of boosting the lottery sales – beefing up the ad budget and expanding the number of places where tickets are sold.

Grossman is vowing to push the Legislature to boost the lottery’s ad budget from just $2 million now.

After all, you’ve to spend money to make money.

‘A Drop In The Bucket’

However, it turns out he is not as bold on this as I first thought. When I interviewed him, we talked about the possibility of getting the ad budget back to $10 million, where it once stood. A spokesman later called me to say Grossman had “misspoke,” and is not comfortable putting any specific dollar figures out given the state’s budget woes.

Still, he wants to push scratch tickets into the hands of out-of-town tourists and business executives, expanding lottery sales into Logan International Airport and state-run tourism centers.

“Maybe privatization would shake things up more than selling scratch tickets at Logan,” said Kimberly Herman, a partner and lottery industry expert at law firm Sullivan & Worcester in Boston, who recently worked on a deal to partially privatize the Illinois state lottery. “That seems to be a drop in the bucket.”

Polito is pushing back on the ad budget, arguing it should stay even at $2 million. Instead of advertising, she says, the lottery should seek out sponsorships and deals with companies eager to get their brands on tickets – in effect getting the private sector to pick up the marketing tab.

She’s also planning on taking a close look at lottery spending.

“This is a very difficult time. People are struggling,” Polito said. “They are trying to rein in their own budgets at home. Our state government needs to do the same.”

Sorry, cutting loose a few hacks might be nice, but it’s not going to keep the lottery sales machine humming. Any more than selling tickets at Logan will, for that matter.