Dorms built on sand

Bill Halter heard from (unfortunately)

— WAS ANYBODY really surprised at the news last week that the Arkansas Lottery may have to cut back on the scholarships it hands out? Or at least the amount it provides students. After all, way back in December, a legislative oversight committee-specifically, the one overseeing the Arkansas Lottery-recommended cuts in those scholarships. It seems not enough money was coming in to cover the costs. Which was good news to some of us. Apparently the new has worn off this whole, legalized scam, and not as many people may be gambling their money away on the scant hope of striking a jackpot.

Lawmakers are pondering what to do. Will the scholarships the lottery pays for have to be cut back from $5,000 a year to $1,000? And then, perhaps, ratcheted up each year until the student graduates? How much should those going to two-year schools get? The folks supervising the lottery are putting pencil to paper. After all, this isn’t Washington, D.C. A state can’t print its own money.

If the lottery isn’t bringing in the cash we were told it would, or there are more students looking for help than anticipated, something’s got to give. Or as Herb Stein, who was Richard Nixon’s man in the economy, would say: If something can’t go on forever, it won’t. His observation has become known as Stein’s Law. Apply it in this case, and it becomes clear that the lottery’s scholarship awards will have to be reduced. If the state can’t afford ’em, it can’t afford ’em.

Not that Bill Halter wants to hear all this. He’s the pol who took the lead in selling the state on this gamble, literally. That was when he was lieutenant governor, and he still sounds proud of this legalized numbers racket-when embarrassment would be the more appropriate reaction. Now he wants to argue with the numbers-the ones that show the lottery may have reached the point of diminishing returns and a course correction is necessary.

Common sense can be hard for some folks to accept, especially when pride of authorship gets in the way. The lottery is Bill Halter’s baby and he refuses to accept its limits. Just as he always brushed off its dangers. And a voluntary tax that exploits the poorest and most gullible of our people comes with a lot of dangers.

THE OTHER day, when legislators were struggling with the basic math involved, the former lite guv and current candidate for fullbird guv put out a testy statement.

This legislation will make it significantly more difficult for Arkansas students to achieve a higher education.

In reality, cutting the size of these scholarships will mean only that students in the future will have to pay off college loans that are about the same size as anybody else’s who’s five years ahead of them in college. Welcome to the club, y’all. It’s called the New Normal.

But don’t get in the way of a politician who sees an opportunity to seize the spotlight, especially when his name is Bill Halter.

With virtually no warning to tens of thousands of parents and students . . .

What? Actually, there have been nothing but warnings of late. You could see this coming-if you were willing to open your eyes and face reality. The story we read said today’s students would see few changes in their scholarships. What our legislators are debatingis whether to cut scholarships in the future. That seems warning enough.

      1. this bill fundamentally changes the program to the point where it will reduce the number of Arkansas students able to enter a state college or university.

Not necessarily. These students can either go deeper into debt or find the money they need for college where students used to find it before the Arkansas Lottery started exploiting the state’s poor suckers. Like applying for other scholarship aid, working part-time jobs, and/or digging into savings.

The fact that more students have received the scholarship than was initially projected is an enormous success that deserves to be built upon rather than cut.

If this is an enormous success, what would be an enormous disappointment? Because it turns out the lottery hasn’t been the panacea its boosters promised. Something-for-nothing schemes rarely work out. Somebody’s got to pay for those scholarships, and there just aren’t enough poor suckers in the state to fleece indefinitely.

What would Mr. Halter have the Ledge do? Force folks to buy lottery tickets? Force colleges to lower tuition and fees? (That’ll be the day! You can hear college administrators screaming even now.) The money just plain isn’t there, Mr. Halter. Do you realize that the state is facing a Medicaid deficit of millions next year? (How many millions changes from week to week.) Does this gubernatorial candidate and pitch man for the state’s lottery want to add more state funds to the scholarships? If so, where does he suggest the money come from?

Arkansans approved the scholarship lottery to offer greater opportunities for higher education in our state.

No, they didn’t.

Voters in this state voted for a lottery, not scholarships. They voted to gamble. Make some easy money. Get rich quick. Oh, sure, the promise of scholarships made good cover, but come now. How many folks swarmed to the polls to help out the kids down the block? A lot fewer, we’d, yes, wager, than those who wanted to have a ticket in their hands when the numbers started flashing on the screen. You could almost see the dollar signs in their eyes. There’s still one born every minute.

POLITICIANS will be politicians, so it was inevitable that a slick one like Bill Halter would take the opportunity to thump his chest. But please, Mr. Halter, spare us the pious protests about the lottery’s being all about scholarships. Or the nonsense about higher education being put out of reach if lawmakers have to reduce the size of those scholarships.

This was all quite predictable when a need as constant as education was funded by a mechanism with returns as iffy as a lottery. The state took a gamble, lost, and now it’s got to pay up somehow. That’s how the game is played. The only mistake the people of Arkansas made was letting ourselves get drawn into this losing proposition by a slick pol like Bill Halter.

There are two ways-at least-to build a prosperous state where industries want to locate, and people to save and invest. One is to concentrate on making government more efficient, taxes more productive, and virtues (like thrift) better rewarded. The other is to gamble on some get-rich-quick scheme. Arkansas gambled-and lost. Now it’s time to pay up. No matter what fantasy world the Bill Halters live in.

Editorial, Pages 17 on 02/20/2013

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