Hawaii House Speaker Joe Souki says lottery legislation is a possibility in the 2016 Legislature.

Past efforts to pass any form of gambling have all failed, leaving Hawaii the only other state besides Utah without any form of legal gaming.

But the recent $1.6 billion Powerball jackpot got local leaders thinking about changing that, and they are not alone.

State Rep. Robert Johnson of Mississippi, according to a news report, says that all the money residents of his state spent on Powerball tickets “could have made a difference for public education if it had been spent in Mississippi instead of Louisiana,” meaning folks drove across the border to buy tickets.

Mississippi is one of six states that don’t run lotteries, along with Hawaii, Utah, Alabama, Alaska and — interestingly — Nevada.

A move for a lottery bill in Mississippi is unlikely to gain traction, though, as Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves says “lotteries don’t offer the same benefits as casinos, which can provide hundreds of jobs and millions of dollars of investment.”