When the idea of the Texas lottery was being sold to the public, I thought the money was supposed to be used for education. But the state and community colleges are being cut mercilessly.
Does anyone (Texan or not) have any idea where this money is going and what it’s being spent on?
[This may not be the correct forum for this question… move ad lib.]
Wait, your logic is that because education funding is being cut, the state lottery money cannot possibly be going to fund education? That doesn’t make sense. It’s entirely possible (and even probable) that lottery money makes up only a small portion of the education budget and doesn’t drastically affect how education is funded.
As I live in Massachusetts (MA) and I don’t play the lottery …
When the MA lottery first started, the money was designated for education, by statute. This was a major selling point to the public. After a few years, the legislature simply changed the statutes so that they could direct it at their will. The public be damned.
I’ve also learned that before the lottery was in place, education already had funding. When the lottery was put in place, they merely directed some of that OLD funding to other items. This gave accountants a way to effective use some lottery funds for other things.
Texas may or may not be similar. If you believe everything that your politicians promise, I’ve got a bridge that connects Long Island to Manhattan that I’d like to sell you.
Let me Google that for you —> http://www.txlottery.org/export/sites/default/Supporting_Education/
And if you want it by the numbers (pdf warning).
I think that’s pretty much the case. Public school expenditures last year were around $32 billion, while the lottery brings in about $1 billion a year for education.
We’re spending it on Governor “Good Hair” Rick Perry’s mansion rental.
Textbooks ?
bizerta does have an excellent point though. No lottery in the U.S. brings in any money to education over time. To do that, it would have to be considered purely a bonus once education was already funded the way it would have been anyway and used on top of that but government budgets don’t work that way. It is simply money in and money out. You can label those dollars in and out anyway you want to but it doesn’t change the reality that education, like everything else, gets what people think it needs and not more.
In Michigan, they shift money around. They took certain funds from the schools and replaced them with the lottery so that they can tell the public that the lottery money goes to the schools. In reality, the original school money goes to other things and the lottery replaces it. Or simply put, the lottery money funds other stuff.