Category: Arkansas Lottery

Will the Arkansas Lottery Reduce Its Scholarship Budget Next Week?

Yesterday the Arkansas Lottery released its financial report for the month of January. The report shows lottery ticket sales and net proceeds for college scholarships are still lagging.

In December, we wrote how at the rate things are going, the Arkansas Lottery stands to come in about $8 million short of its scholarship goal for 2014. According to the Lottery Commission’s budget, the Arkansas Lottery needs to allocate about $7.4 million per month, on average, to meet its goal of $89.5 million in scholarship money for the year. So far, however, these monthly reports show the Arkansas Lottery has allocated more like $6.4 – $6.8 million for scholarships each month.

That’s a shortfall of nearly $1 million every month.

Lottery Director Bishop Woosley recently hinted if lottery ticket sales did not improve soon, the Arkansas Lottery Commission might have to reevaluate its scholarship budget for the year. According to its website, Lottery Commissioners are scheduled to meet next week.

In light of this latest report revealing the Arkansas Lottery’s situation has not improved, one has to wonder if adjusting the scholarship budget will be a topic at next week’s meeting.

See the Arkansas Lottery’s financial report for the month of January here.

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More Lottery Predictions Coming True

Last spring we wrote a blog post called “10 Lottery Predictions That Came True.” It highlighted 10 things we said would happen if the Arkansas Lottery were established.

Last week we told you about a proposal to bring video lotteries to Arkansas. We predicted this back in 2009, when the Arkansas Lottery first set up shop. Below is a video we released at the time discussing this issue. Watch it, and see if what we predicted about the lottery is coming true.

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AR Could Get More Money with 4/10-cent Sales Tax than a Lottery

Here’s some sad news: The State of Arkansas could get more money for college scholarships by raising the state sales tax four-tenths of a penny than it currently “generates” with the Arkansas Lottery.

According to reports on the Department of Finance and Administration’s website, the State of Arkansas has collected roughly $1.4 – 1.6 billion annually in sales taxes since 2010. The state sales tax is currently 6.5% — meaning for every dollar you spend at the store, the state charges six-and-a-half cents in sales tax.

In order to collect an additional $90 – $100 million — the amount of money lottery proponents promised Arkansas’ college students would receive — the State of Arkansas would need to charge a “whopping” four-tenths of a penny extra on each sales dollar, raising the tax rate from 6.5% to 6.9%.

Now, I am not advocating higher taxes. I think we are taxed enough as it is. But in 2009, if lawmakers had said, “We have to come up with an extra $100 million in college scholarships, and we can do it either by raising the state sales tax or by instituting a state-run lottery,” I would have told our lawmakers, “Raise the sales tax.”

Here are five reasons why: (more…)

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