Lottery's promise

The state auditor is right to hold leaders accountable for their promises of lottery money for education

Realists expected all along that proceeds from a state lottery would simply replace tax dollars dedicated to education. No, no, no, supporters of a Tar Heel lottery protested. North Carolina's numbers game would supplement current education spending.

As The N&O reported yesterday, realism has already reared its gnarly head. Half of the lottery's $400 million expected earnings will replace state money already being spent reducing class sizes and preparing pre-schoolers for kindergarten.

Such shuffling -- while perhaps wise in this case -- makes decisions on how to spend the other half of the lottery's proceeds all the more important. Governor Easley and lawmakers who promised the money to education ought to be willing to write that promise into the state constitution.

The lottery law passed last summer included a promise that proceeds wouldn't replace other education revenue. Come to find out, though, authors of the budget bill deleted that promise, and it's the budget bill that counts.

The ray of hope in this maddening turn of events is State Auditor Les Merritt's insistence on the facts. Merritt has been pressing the Easley administration for an indisputable record of current spending, information that is necessary to ensure lottery proceeds will be additional resources for education.

To be sure, there is political advantage for a Republican auditor to challenge a Democratic administration. In this case, politics can work to the public's advantage.

It will take independent oversight of the lottery's finances to guard against the supplanting of tax revenue that has happened in so many other lottery states.

In addition to building schools and college scholarships, the law does call for lottery revenue to pay for reducing class sizes and preparing pre-schoolers for kindergarten. It's also true Easley has long called for a lottery to pay for those programs. Wisely, state lawmakers didn't wait.

Now it appears $210 million will be needed from the lottery just to keep the pre-kindergartners' program going and class size manageable in the lower grades. That could still leave plenty of room to do more for the public schools, but it's not spelled out yet.

The governor's fiscal adviser, Dan Gerlach, told The N&O the rest will go for education, as it must. Increasing teachers' salaries would go a long way to help rural school districts improve their instruction.

Merritt needs to stay on this case, but that's not all. Easley has expressed support for a state constitutional amendment locking in lottery proceeds to education. Promises of the past would gain staying power if the governor would shepherd such an amendment through to its passage.