Strong support for state lottery, Lt. Gov. Bill Halter tells students

Lt. Gov. Bill Halter spoke to and answered questions from ASU students Tuesday about a proposed amendment to the Arkansas constitution allowing a state lottery.

The amendment, which will be on the Nov. 4 ballot, specifies that all proceeds from the lottery go to fund scholarships for Arkansas students attending Arkansas colleges.

"This proposal is about you," Halter said to the crowd of mostly ASU students. "It's about future Arkansas students … your sons and daughters."

The amendment, which is available to view in full at www.HopeForArkansas.org, stipulates that all funds after operating costs and prizes go into a trust fund separate from the general budget.

Those funds will only be awarded in the form of scholarships and grants to Arkansas students attending accredited two-year and four-year institutions within the state.

The amendment also forbids any lottery other than the specified scholarship lottery and includes a section insisting that it will have no effect on other gambling operations in the state.

In order to avoid issues that similar proposals have caused in other states, the amendment decrees that lottery funds would "supplement, not supplant," educational money already provided by the state.

Halter said that a lottery makes perfect sense if you consider a few key facts.

"Arkansas is one of only eight states without a lottery," Halter said. "In my lifetime, Arkansas has been 48th or 49th out of 50 states in per capita income … We are currently 49th in the percentage of adults with a college degree … We have to address that."

The significance of the fact that Arkansas is one of eight states without a lottery, Halter went on to explain, is that most of those other states receive a large amount of income from other sources, such as casinos in Nevada and Mississippi, energy resources in Alaska and Wyoming and tourism in Hawaii.

Halter said there is already strong support for a lottery in Arkansas because in all of the states on our border that have a lottery, the most tickets are sold in stores closest to the Arkansas state line.

He said, although two previous lottery proposals have failed to receive enough votes, those were tied in with other gambling operations, such as casinos and racetracks.

"It is the view of the attorney general and our (campaign's) view that this will have no impact on any other gaming provisions in the state," Halter said. "You're going to hear the opponents say that's not true. But they're wrong."

One of the biggest challengers to this amendment has been the Arkansas Family Council. The conservative group recently filed a last-minute lawsuit, which is currently being reviewed in the Arkansas Supreme Court, to have the proposal taken off the Nov. 4 ballot because the amendment's title and name is "inaccurate, incomplete and misleading."

"The thing you need to remember is that the people who are fighting this so hard don't want a lottery at all in any form," Halter said. "What I find most objectionable is that they don't want to allow you the opportunity to vote on it … they are going to try to impose their will and their judgment on all of you."

If the two-paragraph amendment passes, Halter said most of the details will be set by the Arkansas legislature. Decisions about eligibility for the scholarships, total amount of funds made available to a single recipient, whether or not scholarships will be made available to graduate or master's level students and other guidelines should be decided between January and May 2009.

"There is a limit on how much you want to put in the state's constitution because it is very difficult to change it," Halter said. "Our preference was to have the details of the scholarships in legislation so that they could be more readily adaptable."

The good news, Halter said, is that a lottery system could be up and running by late 2009 and scholarships would be made available shortly afterwards.

Halter estimated that a lottery would bring in an additional $100 million to supplement the $40 million the state currently provides for educational purposes.

"We base that calculation on what has been achieved in the five states that border Arkansas that have lotteries," Halter said. "When you do the calculation, it yields $120 million based on Arkansas's population. We wanted to be conservative and said $100 million instead of $120 million."

Halter, after the meeting, said the start-up costs for the lottery, if passed through vote, would be pretty low. He said Arkansas would probably follow other states in establishing a small loan to begin. He said these loans, using other states again as an example, were usually paid back within a week to a month.

He said the lottery's gross receipts would pay for the administration pay, which would be a low sum, prizes and the scholarships.

A key point Halter pushed throughout the session was the importance of young voters. He encouraged audience members to make their voices heard and to encourage friends and family to do the same.

"There is no age group that matters more than you potentially," Halter said. "If you change your voting behaviors as a group, you can have a profound impact on this election.