4:31 p.m.- Next Step For Lottery
By: Pete Thompson, KARK 4 News
Updated: June 10, 2009
One of the biggest issues is amendment three -- which in effect would create a lottery in the state of Arkansas.
Tuesday night it passed by an overwhelming margin... now the question is, what's next?
Lieutenant Governor Bill Halter spearheaded the effort to get the lottery amendment passed.
Now he says the next step is to take a look at what other states have done to raise money in order to actually start their lottery operations.
"Other states have taken out an extremely short term loan,” Halter says, “ A loan that typically pays off within a month of the beginning of operations."
That loan could cover anything from administrative costs to the initial prize money itself.
But some say the bigger question right now is, how will students qualify for the college scholarship money raised by the lottery?
Halter says the legislature will determine that, but he's always liked the model the state of Georgia uses.
"You have to go to a Georgia high school, you have to go to a Georgia college, you have to have a B average,” he says, “If you do that you get to go to college it's that simple."
We don't know yet whether or not Arkansas will adopt that model, but it's clear voters we talked with will pay close attention to how the legislature handles this.
"I am very concerned and interested in how this is all handled,” says voter Susan Shaddox, “but I know education is always the answer no matter what the problem is."
"We're already 49th in the nation in education, our kids need all the breaks in the world they can get," says Dennis Wright.
According to Halter, over one million students in Georgia have received college scholarships over the past 10 years.


