The director of the Arkansas Scholarship Lottery, Bishop Woosley, has received a 2 percent merit bonus.
Woosley was paid a merit bonus of $2,832.06 last Friday based on 2 percent of his base salary of $141,603 a year, according to information released by the lottery this week in response to a public-records request from the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
While Woosley's annual compensation is $165,000, $141,603 is the maximum salary for a lottery director under state law and that's considered to be his salary for the purpose of computing his merit bonuses, cost-of-living raises and retirement, according to Woosley.
The law allows the Legislature's Lottery Oversight Committee to give directors a special allowance on top of their base salary. Under state law, any pay above $141,603 up to $354,007 a year requires the committee's approval. The committee approved $165,000 a year for Woosley's salary and allowance after his Feb. 12, 2012, promotion from chief legal counsel.
The Lottery Commission decided that its employees were eligible for merit bonuses up to 3 percent in fiscal 2014 after Gov. Mike Beebe's administration authorized state agencies to give similar merit bonuses.
Employees can receive 3 percent bonuses if they "exceed standards," 2 percent bonuses if their work is "above average," and 1 percent bonuses if it is "satisfactory," Department of Finance and Administration Director Richard Weiss said in his memo. The Lottery Commission decided to hand out merit bonuses for fiscal 2014 to its employees based on their best annual performance evaluation in 2013 or 2014.
Commission Chairman John C. "Smokey " Campbell of Hot Springs has declined to comment about the performance evaluations of Woosley and the lottery's internal auditor, Matt Brown.
Campbell could not be reached for comment Thursday by telephone about this year's evaluations.
A year ago, then-Commission Chairman George Hammons of Pine Bluff said the commission gave Woosley and Brown favorable job evaluations in a private meeting.
This year, both Woosley and Brown, who report directly to the commission, raised questions about their evaluations after receiving them in May, according to the lottery's records.
Woosley said Thursday that he and Brown wanted to meet with the commission "as a whole" to discuss their individual performance evaluations and that happened last week.
"It was very constructive for me and I saw where they were coming from and I am satisfied," he said.
The merit bonuses came as the lottery's ticket sales and net proceeds for college scholarships dipped for the second consecutive fiscal year. The lottery has helped finance more than 30,000 college scholarships during each of the past four years.
During the past few months, the commission has signed off on Woosley's recommendations to implement the quick-draw monitor game, ask lawmakers to change state law during their 2015 session to allow the purchase of lottery tickets with debit cards, increase the lottery's $4.5 million advertising budget by $500,000 in fiscal 2015, and lift the commission's ban on advertising on college campuses.
But the Legislature passed a law in this week's special session to bar the lottery from offering electronic monitor games until March 13 so the General Assembly can weigh in when it meets next year.
The commission last week decided to seek proposals from companies for performance audit and consulting services on the lottery's operations.
Brown, who started work for the commission in July 2012 and whose annual salary is $112,200, received a 3 percent merit bonus totaling $3,366 for fiscal 2014, according to lottery records.
Among the lottery's other employees with annual salaries exceeding $100,000 a year, gaming director Michael C. Smith, whose annual salary is $156,060 a year, received a 3 percent merit bonus totaling $4,681.80; now-former security director Lance Huey, whose annual salary was $115,644, received a 2 percent merit bonus totaling $2,312.88; and chief legal counsel Jean Block, whose annual salary is $107,100, received a 3 percent merit bonus totaling $3,213, according to lottery records.
After nearly five years of working for the lottery, Huey retired effective Monday. The former Grant County sheriff said he retired because "I am just ready to move on."
Huey's retirement came nearly a year after the lottery's former deputy security director, Remmele Mazyck, pleaded guilty in federal court to charges of wire fraud and money laundering. He had admitted stealing lottery tickets with a face value of $477,893. In November, a federal judge sentenced Mazyck to serve 37 months in prison and ordered him to pay more than $482,000 in restitution.
Metro on 07/04/2014