Jason Tolbert with Talk Business has written an excellent write-up of yesterday’s contentious meeting between lottery officials and the lottery’s legislative oversight committee. It’s worth checking out, and you can read it by clicking here.
Two news articles came out over the weekend showing that Arkansas’ lottery is played heavily in our poorest counties and communities.
The first is an article in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette by Michael Wickline. You can read it here (account required).
The second is an article from the Associated Press. It provides a synopsis of some of the information found in the Democrat-Gazette article. You can read it for free here.
These articles look at financial data from the Arkansas Lottery, including counties where ticket sales were the highest. We will try to provide a more in-depth analysis of these articles in the near future.
I came across some interesting news this weekend. It’s possible—though not confirmed at this point—that Lottery Director Ernie Passailaigue could be leaving Arkansas and heading back home to South Carolina. Sources tell online news site FITSNews.com that “Passailaigue is being tapped to run a lobbying effort aimed at bringing video poker back to South Carolina.”