Arkansas Lottery Scholarship Funding Remains Dismal Despite Best December on Record

Scholarship funding at the Arkansas Lottery has remained dismal despite the fact that the Lottery had what appears to be its best December on record.

Reports recently released by the state’s Lottery Office show the Arkansas Lottery took in more than $50.3 million last month, but paid about $5.9 million to college scholarships — about 12 cents out of every dollar the Lottery earned.

Overall, less than 17% of the Lottery’s revenue has gone to scholarships this year while 70% has gone to prizes.

For perspective, the typical state-run lottery spends about 30% of its revenue on education and about 60% on prizes.

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

MonthGross Lottery RevenuePaid to Scholarships% Gross Revenue
July$49,780,369.99$8,592,573.9317.3%
August49,672,105.047,862,917.4415.8%
September47,501,224.727,691,576.9916.2%
October42,615,839.968,447,337.0019.8%
November43,115,514.848,207,598.8819.0%
December50,329,644.305,970,922.5311.9%
Total$283,014,698.85$46,772,926.7716.5%

Arkansas Lottery Spends Another $11,000 on Mileage in a Single Month

In the past month, the Arkansas Lottery has reportedly reimbursed its employees for another $11,000 worth of travel, according to the Arkansas Transparency website.

State employees receive 42 cents for every mile they travel on state business in their personal vehicles.

Since the fiscal year began on July 1, 2020, the Arkansas Lottery has paid its employees $79,268 in mileage reimbursements.

That’s enough to cover nearly 189,000 miles of driving!

Some employees have received thousands of dollars for driving their personal vehicles on state business.

As we have written many times, the Arkansas Lottery probably could save a lot of money by using state vehicles for travel instead of paying employees to drive their personal vehicles — or by finding ways to reduce travel in general.

Photo Credit: Airtuna08 at English Wikipedia [CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)]