Lottery proposal qualifies for ballot slot, Halter says
Posted on Wednesday, May 14, 2008
URL: http://www.nwanews.com/adg/News/225662/
Lt. Gov. Bill Halter said Tuesday that enough signatures have been collected to get his lottery proposal on the Nov. 4 ballot.
If voters adopt his proposed constitutional amendment, the Legislature could create state lotteries in Arkansas as early as next year to pay for college scholarships.
“We are thereby one step closer to providing higher education opportunities for Arkansas’ students to attend Arkansas ’ colleges and universities,” Halter said at a news conference on the Capitol’s front steps with several college students and union members.
He said the Hope for Arkansas committee, which he formed to promote his proposal, will continue collecting signatures. The goal is to get 100, 000, he said.
The committee must turn in at least 77, 468 signatures on a petition by July 7 to the secretary of state to get the proposed amendment on the ballot.
The petition also must have signatures from at least 15 of the state’s 75 counties and each of those counties’ petitions must have signatures equal to at least 5 percent of the votes cast in the governor’s race. These thresholds have been met, said Bud Jackson, a spokesman for Hope for Arkansas.
In what Halter described as the “symbolic 77, 468 th signature,” Kendra Bean of Little Rock, a freshman studying aviation at Pulaski Technical College, signed the petition.
“I am thankful that I am able to obtain an Arkansas education, and I am pleased to support this college scholarship lottery because I believe it will open new doors of opportunity for more Arkansas residents to receive a higher education degree,” she said.
Halter said Bean, 19, was selected to make “the symbolic 77, 468 th signature” because she supports the proposed constitutional amendment and she’s in college now.
Bean said she’s paying for college out of her pocket with the help of grants. She said she took an English class taught by Marvin Schwartz of Little Rock, the campaign manager for the Hope for Arkansas committee.
Halter has estimated a lottery would raise about $ 100 million a year.
That’s far more than some other estimates. The state Department of Finance and Administration, for example, has projected that a lottery would generate about $ 55 million.
A lottery would be “a wonderful opportunity” for Arkansas to increase the percentage of adults with a college degree, Halter said.
Arkansas ranks 49 th among the 50 states.
It also is an opportunity to increase the state’s per-capita income through education, he said.
After the news conference, Jerry Cox, executive director of the anti-lottery Family Council Action Committee, said it doesn’t surprise him that the needed signatures were gathered with paid gatherers.
Cox also cast doubt on the monetary impact of the lottery. Georgia’s college graduation rate “hasn’t really gone up any to speak of” with its lottery helping fund scholarships, Cox said.
“So if [Halter ] is patterning this proposal after the proposal in Georgia, then it is going to come up short,” Cox said. “It fails to deliver what it promises.”
John Thomas, a spokesman for the Cox group, said U. S. Census Bureau figures show that the percent of Arkansas ’ residents with a college degree increased by 5 percent from 1990-2006 without a lottery and Georgia’s increased 7 percent during the period. Georgia voters approved a lottery in 1993, and sales began on June 29, 1993, according to the Georgia lottery’s Web site.
Jackson said Cox’s people “repeatedly roll out cherry-picked or manipulated facts that simply don’t apply or deliberately mislead voters to promote their own special interest agenda.”
Cox said Halter’s proposal is “legally flawed” and lacks a definition of a lottery.
“I think we are going to do everything we can to defeat this proposal and, if a legal challenge is appropriate, then we will certainly do that,” he said. “But we have no plans at this time to do one. But that’s just because we haven’t looked at it thoroughly enough to decide exactly how we would go about challenging it legally.”
In November, Attorney General Dustin McDaniel certified the popular name and ballot title of the proposed amendment to clear the way for its supporters to begin a petition drive. The name and title are what voters see on the ballot.
The proposed amendment would repeal the state constitution’s lottery prohibition and authorize the General Assembly to enact laws to establish, operate and regulate state lotteries.
Lottery proceeds “shall be used solely to pay the operating expenses of lotteries, including all prizes, and to fund or provide for scholarships and grants to citizens of this State enrolled in public and private nonprofit two- and four-year colleges and universities located within the State that are certified according to criteria established by the General Assembly.”
The General Assembly would establish criteria to determine who qualifies to receive the scholarships and grants.
Arkansas voters rejected state lotteries in 1996 and 2000. Both of those proposals included provisions for casinos.