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Lottery Funds Transferred Funds from the North Carolina Education Lottery, totaling $124.3 million, were transferred to the state last week, fulfilling the second of four required transfers for the 2010-2011 fiscal year. Of those funds, $102 million was transferred to the State Education Lottery Fund. Under the direction of the General Assembly, the remaining funds, $22.3 million, will be earmarked to cover a shortfall in federal Medicaid funding. Under law, the North Carolina Education Lottery authorizes four separate transfers of funds to the state—one for each quarter of a fiscal year. The transferred funds are directed to two separate funds- a reserve fund, which is capped at $50 million, and a separate fund, which further allotted the monies to four separate uses: need-based college scholarships, school construction, class size reduction efforts, and More at Four, the state-sponsored pre-kindergarten program for at-risk children. When the state first established the lottery in 2005, state law required that 35 cents of every dollar raised be allocated for education. The General Assembly later modified the law and changed the 35 percent requirement in order to increase prize payouts, arguing that greater incentives to play would provide greater funding for educational purposes. As the nation continues to recover from the economic recession, recent trends in North Carolina have shown a correlation between rising unemployment rates and increased lottery revenues. “Time and time again, we see states using so-called’ ‘education’ lottery funds for purposes other than education,” Bill Brooks, President of the North Carolina Family Policy Council, remarked. “If the General Assembly is not going to repeal the lottery as they should, then they should at the very least take the word ‘education’ out of the official name of the lottery, or use all the funds for education, so as not to mislead the hardworking North Carolinians who gamble their money away in these difficult times.”Related resources: Copyright © 2011. North Carolina Family Policy Council. All rights reserved.
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