Should we expand gambling in Georgia to bolster HOPE?
In talking to parents of young children, I find many fear that the HOPE Scholarship will dwindle away to pennies by the time their kids reach college age.
The changes to HOPE by Gov. Nathan Deal and the Legislature link the merit scholarship to available lottery funds, so the amount will now vary year to year. It will likely never pay 100 percent of tuition again, given the growing demand on lottery proceeds.
Did you see the AJC interview with the father of HOPE,former Gov. Zell Miller? In a rare press interview, an ailing Miller told my colleague Jim Galloway, “I don’t think they had any other choice. We knew back in the ‘90s that there would be adjustments. This came as no surprise.”
Galloway reports that Miller is not alarmed at the decision by state lottery officials to approve the sale of tickets through the Internet.
“I’m okay with that. In fact, we wrote the lottery law so you could do that,” he said. But as for that plan to create a casino with machines operated by the Georgia Lottery Corporation, Miller said he’ll let others decide that.
Now, a new poll by by SurveyUSA for 11Alive news showed 56 percent of likely voters said they would support casino-style video lottery terminals to raise money for HOPE. The TV station reports that support for the casino machines reaches across almost every demographic; even voters who identify themselves as “conservative” and “evangelical” approve.
I don’t share the fears of some that gambling will lead Georgia into depravity. (We already have legalized gambling with the lottery.)
That’s probably because I grew up in New Jersey where Atlanta City is a gambling mecca with a large appeal to retirees in the region who come by the busloads for the slot machines, dinner and a show.
I am not a gambler but have seen friends struggle with its addictive nature. I am not sure we can create public policy that avoids feeding all bad habits. (Witness the uproar in New York, which is about to vote on the big soda ban sought by Mayor Bloomberg to combat obesity.)
What do you think? Are we setting down the wrong path with casino machines even for a good cause, expanded higher ed options?
–From Maureen Downey, for the AJC Get Schooled blog
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58 comments Add your comment
mountain man
July 25th, 2012
5:32 pm
“I do hope that someone will challenge the that the Federal Govenment under Reagan effectively blackmailed all states to increase the drinking age to 21.”
You know those Reagan Repiublicans – they believe in big government intrusion into our lives.
history teacher
July 25th, 2012
10:51 pm
The lottery made record profits this year. the easiest way to protect Hope would be for the state legislature to pass a law tying tuition hikes at colleges to inflation rates. to make sure they dont make it up in fees, there needs to be more transparency and limits on fees public colleges charge students. My daughter has full HOPE. However her fees for this fall semester were over $1000. When I looked at the breakdown, it was like reading a foreign language. I have not problem with some fees but I would like to know what an institutional fee for $250 is.
Pride and Joy
July 26th, 2012
12:20 pm
Daniel noticed that GA license plates are in NC. I wonder about those people, Daniel. Those who can least afford it are gambling away their money instead of buying food and shelter and then taxpayers like me end up paying for the necessities for those people. We need a filter to disallow the poor people from wasting their money so that the middle class Americans like me don’t have to pay for their stupid decisions.
I don’t believe as the NAACP would have us believe, that we should illegalize the lottery because poor people shouldn’t play it. I believe we should ban poor people (those on any form of public assistance) from playing it and from gambling.
Ole Guy
July 26th, 2012
11:56 pm
Well, it’s just like my bud, Ronnie Reagan, used to say…”There you go again”! There are many people who feel that all they have to do, in order to garner unquestioning public support, is tie their agendas to “mom, apple pie, religion, and, of course, the ole standby…guaranteed to generate tears of undying acceptance…EDUCATION (back in the 60s/70s, the ole political saw was…”whats good for GM is good for America”; we saw where that got us to the tune of some 700B$…but this ain’t no history lesson…or is it?
YOU IDIOTS DECIDE.
Rich
July 27th, 2012
2:23 pm
Fine with true casinios, but not as a solution to resolve budget problems. Does not matter if it is the City’s sewer system, Hope or transportation.
Tabitha
July 29th, 2012
9:32 am
Using gaming as a hoped for easy, no pain way to fund education is a terrible idea.
First this is not primarily about education but is about a developer making a pile of money. If you think for profit education is a bad idea, for profit taxation is a worse one.
Second, we know from our neighbors that where there is video gaming ,there is big casino money in play that is deeply corrupting to the political system. We have enough of that and don’t need more.
Finally, we need to fund our schools and our roads, not look for an easy, no pain solution to matters that we need to pay for. The evils that gaming brings far, far outweigh any short term value.
Bullard
July 29th, 2012
9:46 am
I’m agnostic and my opinion of this project is not weighted by any religious or southern baptist beliefs. That said, I can’t stand the idea. Gambling already is an epidemic in this state. I previously worked as a cashier at a family-run convenience store. I have seen people spend between 500-1,000 dollars at a time scratching off losing 5, 10 and 20 dollar scratch-off tickets. These werent people who pulled up in Mercedes and Lexuses, mind you.
Also, the value of a college education has changed dramatically since the lottery’s inception. I’m sorry, but a Marketing or Mass Communications degree from a small public liberal arts college is barely worth the paper that it’s printed on. Why should lottery proceeds foot the bill for some kid can spend four years partying and taking easy liberal arts classes that make them no more employable than the day that they graduated high school. That may sound like an extreme hypothetical, but it’s something that’s repeated every year thousands of times in this state.
Robert
July 29th, 2012
10:56 am
The state legislation needs to pass a law that immediately takes the power to set up gambling of this sort away from the Lottery Board. Tacky is as tacky does; since the 1996 Olympics, that is what we are known for.