Didn't we talk about this lottery stuff last month?
I'm sitting at my desk scratching my head right now. There's an AP story moving apparently based on an N+O story that itself looks to be inspired by an Independent Weekly story about how there’s some concern that it will difficult or impossible to show that lottery proceeds are being used for education as promised.
Readers here got a jump start on the big news last month.
I wrote a story and blogged about this very debate between the state auditor’s office and Easley’s office. (I guess its, um, more newsy now or something.)
The point of contention is this: some of the lottery proceeds will go to pay for programs that are already up and running, like pre-K. This smacks of the dreaded “supplanting” (read more on that here and here) where lottery proceeds don’t bolster education as promised, but simply become part of the mélange that is the state’s general budget.
Here’s the shade of grey introduced by the governor’s folks though: The money that is freed up by the lottery funds will go toward paying for other education needs, such as boosting teacher salaries.
Skeptics (like State Auditor Les Merritt) say that kind of shifting around is hard to track and it will be virtually impossible to tell where the money has gone.
That argument is fair enough. The counterpoint offered by the governor’s folks is you just have to watch over-all education spending rise to tell if the lottery dollars are doing their job. Frankly, I’m not sure either one is completely right. I don’t know if Merritt needs ALL the detail he’s seeking, but I’m not sure that we can skip happily along just looking at the 10,000-foot view of the budget secure in thinking that no one is playing Three Card Monte with the lottery dollars.
I do think it’s too early to use the headline that I’ve seen a lot this morning, “Lottery not just for schools.” If the lottery proceeds are being used to boost over-all education spending over and above what it would have been, well that seems to me to meet the intent of the lottery law.
The big question is this: how can we be sure that’s happening? More to come on this from the folks up here in Raleigh, but as always you can have your say right now in the comments section below.