Tag: Arkansas Lottery

Arkansas Lottery Puts up Dismal January Numbers

Last Friday the Arkansas released its financial report for the month of January 2019.

The report shows the Arkansas Lottery grossed nearly $40.6 million last month, but paid just $7.8 million to college scholarships — about 19 cents out of every dollar the lottery made.

In the last seven months the Arkansas Lottery has given about 17% of its revenue to scholarships — less than half the percentage our neighbors to the south in Louisiana allocate for education.

After ten years of failed promises to change and improve, the Arkansas Lottery continues to fail to make scholarship funding a serious priority.

Below is a breakdown of Lottery revenue so far this fiscal year.

Month	Gross Lottery Revenue	Paid to Scholarships	% Gross Revenue
July	$ 42,413,352.70	$ 5,066,628.73	11.9%
August	40,343,279.62	6,175,998.40	15.3%
September	35,198,809.72	7,783,450.82	22.1%
October	57,575,285.62	11,259,040.31	19.6%
November	37,700,016.00	6,821,411.01	18.1%
December	45,859,642.73	6,650,791.54	14.5%
January, 2019	40,574,813.28	7,848,495.62	19.3%
Total	$ 299,665,199.67	$ 51,605,816.43	17.2%

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Budget Proposal Would Supplement Lottery Scholarships With $25M in State Taxpayer Dollars

Last week the Joint Budget Committee at the Arkansas Legislature filed S.B. 93 appropriating public funds for the Department of Higher Education.

The bill is a fairly standard budget measure providing funds for the state Department of Higher Education’s staff, scholarships, and grants. However, the measure allocates $25 million to help pay for a scholarship the Arkansas Lottery is supposed to fund.

Many Arkansans do not realize that since the Arkansas Lottery passed in 2008, the Arkansas Legislature has been forced to make up for the lottery’s shortcomings by continuing to budget millions in taxpayer funding to supplement the Academic Challenge Scholarship each year.

When the Arkansas Lottery was established, the state was assured lottery proceeds would provide $100 million per year in scholarship funding. Instead, the Arkansas Lottery has consistently fallen millions of dollars short of that goal.

As a result, the Arkansas Legislature has supplemented Academic Challenge with funding from the state.

S.B. 93 gives the Academic Challenge Scholarship $25 million in state funding for Fiscal Year 2020 — the same amount as budgets from previous years.

The Arkansas Lottery rolled out more gambling more quickly than any other lottery we know of in America. Its administrative costs have routinely been high, and it has consistently budgeted a smaller percentage of its revenue for students than other state lotteries do.

The fact that the Arkansas Legislature has to spend million of dollars in taxpayer money making up for these deficiencies year after year is a reminder of what a disappointment the State Lottery has turned out to be for Arkansas.

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Arkansas Lottery Continues to Give Paltry Funding to Scholarships

Yesterday the Arkansas Lottery released its financial report for the month of December.

The report shows the Arkansas Lottery took in nearly $45.9 million last month, but gave college scholarships less than $6.7 million — 14.5% of all the money the Lottery made. Compare that with states like Louisiana that allocate 35% of their lottery’s revenue for education.

Since July the Arkansas Lottery has given scholarships less than 17 cents of every dollar it made.

For nearly ten years the Arkansas Lottery has demonstrated time and again that scholarship funding is not its highest priority. Things like administrative costs and contracts have continued to take precedence over increasing the budget for Arkansas’ students.

Below is a breakdown of lottery revenue so far this fiscal year.

Month	Gross Lottery Revenue	Paid to Scholarships	% Gross Revenue
July	$42,413,352.70	$5,066,628.73	11.9%
August	40,343,279.62	6,175,998.40	15.3%
September	35,198,809.72	7,783,450.82	22.1%
October	57,575,285.62	11,259,040.31	19.6%
November	37,700,016.00	6,821,411.01	18.1%
December	45,859,642.73	6,650,791.54	14.5%
Total	$259,090,386.39	$43,757,320.81	16.9%

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