Video: AR Lottery Spending Thousands on Travel Mileage
The Arkansas Lottery is spending thousands of dollars reimbursing employees for travel mileage every month.
Watch this video to learn more.
State Lottery Employees Spent Another $12K on Travel in August
Based on information from the state’s transparency website, the Arkansas Lottery has spent approximately $12,000 reimbursing employees for mileage expenses in August, and $23,000 total on mileage since July 1.
State employees receive 42 cents for every mile they travel on state business in their personal vehicles; some employees are receiving hundreds of dollars every month in reimbursement for their mileage.
As we’ve written many times, the Arkansas Lottery probably could save a lot of money by having employees travel in official state vehicles instead of paying them to drive their own cars.
Unfortunately, saving money and being fiscally responsible isn’t something the Lottery Office seems interested in doing.
Photo Credit: Airtuna08 at English Wikipedia [CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)]
Arkansas Lottery Budgets 17% of Its Revenue for Education
The Arkansas Lottery is continuing to set aside very little money for college scholarships, according to a report released this week.
In July the state-run Lottery took in nearly $49.8 million, but paid only $8.6 million to college scholarships — about 17 cents out of every dollar the Lottery made.
July marks the beginning of the Arkansas Lottery’s new fiscal year.
To date, the Arkansas Lottery has maintained a pattern of budgeting an extraordinary amount of money for prizes and other expenses while setting aside relatively little money for students.
Photo Credit: Powerball and Mega Millions Lottery Billboard in Missouri by Tony Webster, on Flickr.