Strong support for state lottery, Lt. Gov. Bill Halter tells students
Michael Vernor
Issue date: 10/9/08 Section: News
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The amendment, which will be on the Nov. 4 ballot, specifies that all proceeds from the lottery go to fund scholarships for Arkansas students attending Arkansas colleges.
"This proposal is about you," Halter said to the crowd of mostly ASU students. "It's about future Arkansas students … your sons and daughters."
The amendment, which is available to view in full at www.HopeForArkansas.org, stipulates that all funds after operating costs and prizes go into a trust fund separate from the general budget.
Those funds will only be awarded in the form of scholarships and grants to Arkansas students attending accredited two-year and four-year institutions within the state.
The amendment also forbids any lottery other than the specified scholarship lottery and includes a section insisting that it will have no effect on other gambling operations in the state.
In order to avoid issues that similar proposals have caused in other states, the amendment decrees that lottery funds would "supplement, not supplant," educational money already provided by the state.
Halter said that a lottery makes perfect sense if you consider a few key facts.
"Arkansas is one of only eight states without a lottery," Halter said. "In my lifetime, Arkansas has been 48th or 49th out of 50 states in per capita income … We are currently 49th in the percentage of adults with a college degree … We have to address that."
The significance of the fact that Arkansas is one of eight states without a lottery, Halter went on to explain, is that most of those other states receive a large amount of income from other sources, such as casinos in Nevada and Mississippi, energy resources in Alaska and Wyoming and tourism in Hawaii.
Halter said there is already strong support for a lottery in Arkansas because in all of the states on our border that have a lottery, the most tickets are sold in stores closest to the Arkansas state line.
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