To: The Tennessee State House, The Tennessee State Senate, and Governor Bill Lee
Governor Bill Haslam: Maximize TN Lottery Revenues for Education As Intended
The TN Lottery was not created to be a "slush fund" for the government of TN. The TN Lottery was supposed to help fund education. Reduce the operation expenses of the TN Lottery, i.e. CEO salary, increase the funds available for education and use the TN Lottery profits to fund education.
Why is this important?
In 2011, the Governor of TN was considering allocating TN Lottery Reserves to help support TN budget deficit. It has been reported that the CEO of the TN Lottery earns $600K a year. Rural schools are receiving after-school funds to purchase MacBooks while most of the proceeds come from the poor inter-city lottery players who do not even have an after-school program. So, is this reverse Robin Hood? Before moving to TN from GA, I thought the GA Lottery was bad, cutting back funding every year. At least the GA Lottery pays 100% of a high achieving college freshman's tuition. $4,000 does not pay even half the tuition for any college my son's applying to attend here in TN. According to the 2012 Quality Counts report from the Education Research Center TN scored in the bottom 10 of the 50 states in each of the four tested areas in the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Currently, TN students ranked second to last on the ACT test and approximately 21% of TN adults hold a college degree, far below the national average. Our children's education should be out top priority, and the mishandling and misappropriation of TN Lottery funds needs to stop.