Arkansas Lottery Still a Failure: March Report

Earlier this month the Arkansas Lottery released its financial report for March.

The report shows the Arkansas Lottery took in nearly $52 million, but paid out only a little over $8.5 million for college scholarships — about 16.5% of all the money it made.

For perspective, the typical state lottery gives education programs about 30% of the money it makes. Louisiana’s lottery spends 35%.

During the recent legislative session, lawmakers rejected two proposals that would have incrementally increased the percentage of lottery revenue students receive to 25% by the year 2025.

Below is a breakdown of lottery revenue and scholarship spending 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%
February 41,060,111.75 8,198,257.31 20.0%
March 51,988,380.67 8,552,307.04 16.5%
Total $392,713,692.09 $68,356,380.78 17.4%

NLR Mulls Public Drinking District

KARK 4 News reported this week that officials in North Little Rock are mulling whether or not to permit public drinking in the city’s Argenta District under the state’s new “entertainment district” law.

Act 812 of 2019 by Sen. Trent Garner (R – El Dorado) and Rep. Sonia Barker (R – Smackover) lets cities create “entertainment districts” where open containers of alcohol can be carried and consumed on streets and sidewalks.

Entertainment districts essentially are areas where public drinking and public intoxication are legal. Under this law, an entertainment district could be temporary—such as at an event or festival—or it could be permanent.

Public drinking in entertainment districts raises serious concerns about public safety. Cities like Memphis and New Orleans have had significant problems with violence in their entertainment districts.

North Little Rock Mayor Joe Smith told KARK he doesn’t want to “turn our downtown entertainment district into Bourbon Street.”

Unfortunately, that’s going to be tough to do if the city opts to permit public drinking when Act 812 takes effect later this summer.

Read more here.