LITTLE ROCK — A bill making numerous changes to the state’s lottery law was recommended Wednesday by a House committee, leaving in place the $5,000 and $2,500 scholarship amounts.
Debate over whether to keep the scholarship amount at $5,000 a year for four-year college students may come later in the legislative session, said the sponsor of House Bill 1302, Rep. Barry Hyde, D-North Little Rock.
Hyde said most of the lottery changes are minor and had been recommended in the fall by the Legislature’s Lottery Commission Oversight Committee.
The House Rules Committee recommended HB1302 after 10 minutes of discussion.
Hyde was co-chairman of the oversight committee in the fall.
“There are 20 or so items in here,” Hyde said of the changes in the bill.
“We probably evaluated 70 to 80 different recommendations that came from constituents, the governor, fellow legislators, higher education [officials], institutions of higher learning and attorneys.”
Hyde said the recommended changes include allowing the Department of Higher Education to take action that could benefit members of the military who aren’t continually enrolled in school.
Current law requires scholarship recipients to be continuously enrolled as full time students to be considered as “current achiever.” The change allows members of the military to qualify for scholarships as “current achiever” if their military service interrupts their time in school.
He said another section requires students seeking lottery scholarships to disclose privately awarded scholarships. He said there were concerns that some students were getting so many scholarships that they would be able to keep cash from state scholarships.
Higher-education officials have said it’s rare for students to have spending money left over after paying all college expenses. The bill doesn’t restrict the use of money by students who get private scholarships.
Another change requires a student who wants to receive a scholarship as a “traditional student” to enroll in college in the fall after graduating from high school. Current law gives students 12 months to enroll in college.
The oversight committee in the fall talked about reducing the $5,000 scholarship amount set during the 2010 legislative session. At that time, Hyde proposed lowering it to $4,500, and some wanted to wait for more information later in the legislative session.
The state Department of Higher Education has also made that recommendation, citing the greater number of lottery scholarship recipients than anticipated going to four-year colleges instead of two-year colleges.
Hyde said afterward that he still favors reducing the amount. He said any change would come about in a separate bill.
“It will be an interesting debate,” Hyde said. “If they are unable to pass something, it will remain what it is [at $5,000] and it will cause us to make a sharper correction [later]. There are people in the House who are lobbying for a lower amount [than $4,500] because despite what the director of the lottery says about the expected income they think he is wrong and it is less.”
The lottery started selling tickets on Sept. 28, 2009. The lottery announced that during its first full calendar year of operation it had collected at least $485 million from the sale of tickets, which would provide at least $102 million in scholarships.
For fiscal 2011, which ends June 30, the lottery has projected sales of $464 million and $105 million in scholarships.
Hyde said some would prefer raising academic standards instead of lowering the amount.
“We need to go on with the decisions we have made [about academic requirements] until we have accumulated two or three years of data on our students based on the facts,” Hyde said.
He said the data may show a high dropout rate in college by students receiving the scholarships who posted only the minimum high school grade-point average requirements to receive a scholarship.
If that’s the case, Hyde said, he would recommend no changes in the academic requirements but require that students below a certain grade-point average be eligible only for a lottery scholarship to a two-year college, which is $2,500 a year.
The academic requirements for the lottery scholarship are a 2.5 grade-point average or a 19 ACT score.
Legislative leaders have talked about halting cost of-living adjustments for higher-paid state employees. The Lottery Commission last fall granted lottery Executive Director Ernie Passailaigue a raise from $324,000 to $330,480.
Hyde said there are no plans to scale back Passailaigue’s adjustment. He said the Legislature’s intention was to set up the commission as a “separate entity ... as much as a private business as possible.”
HB1302 also removes higher academic requirements for students from high schools identified as having “grade inflation.”
Hyde said there will be more discussion about how or whether to address that issue as it pertains to the lottery scholarships.
The oversight committee also decided to wait to address what to do with unclaimed lottery winnings.
Front Section, Pages 7 on 02/10/2011