The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reports on auditor findings that reveal former lottery chiefs—Director Ernie Passailaigue and Vice President for Gaming David Barden—spent a considerable amount of their working days out of the state.
The City Wire—a newspaper covering the Fort Smith area—just reported that the Arkansas Lottery’s sales would “surpass $1 billion in the next 24 hours.” For some, this might be a grand milestone, but in reality, there’s nothing exciting about so much money being zapped from our state’s economy.
Last Friday the Department of Higher Education released a study showing 40% of college freshmen who received lottery scholarships last year did not return to school this past August. Among the reasons cited for this failure were students’ inability to meet minimum credit hour and GPA requirements to keep their scholarships.
This is nothing new. The Tennessee Lottery faced this very same situation in the spring of 2008, while lottery proponents were pushing to legalize a lottery in Arkansas. Here’s the problem: (more…)