Lunenburg Officials Support Idea of Lottery Money Returns

LUNENBURG – Lunenburg County and town officials are agreeing to support a petition from Nottoway County officials that asked for part of the local lottery sales to be given back to localities for general fund use.

Crewe Mayor Greg Eanes sent a letter to local officials noting that a request from Nottoway County, Blackstone, Burkeville and Crewe had been sent to Sen. Frank Ruff and Del. Tommy Wright Jr.

In the letter it states “We are requesting a Lottery for Localities legislation that will allocate 5% of total lottery sales back to the general revenue funds of localities where those sales originated.” It is envisioned that the allocation will be culled from the total sales and subtracted from that portion of the lottery pool designated as the Prize pool. In this way the public school funding allocation (approximately 29% of sales) is untouched. No monies are diverted from public education by our formula.”

The letter to Ruff and Wright further stated, ““The revenue infusion a ‘Lottery for Localities’ can provide to local governments will have a positive impact for cash-strapped rural counties facing an ever shrinking business and community tax base while demands for public services rise. We feel this is a discussion that needs to be initiated across the commonwealth with governments and state officials.”

The Virginia Lottery issued a statement in recent years saying, “For just the second time in its history, the Virginia Lottery has delivered more than a half- billion dollars to Virginia’s K-12 public schools in a single fiscal year. The Lottery announced that profits for the 2015 fiscal year totaled nearly $534 million.”

However, some educators say that this is not really what people believe. While the back of tickets has seen tag lines such as “Helping Virginia’s Public Schools” or website quotes of “More than $5 billion contributed to public education,” it may not be given to the state’s public schools in the way many people think.

Some people think that the lottery money is extra funding to schools in addition to what the state is required to give. The lottery was pitched that way when it was originally voted on over two decades ago.

When Virginians voted to create the lottery it was pitched as a way to help public education, but the lottery law never said that the money would be used for that purpose. In 2000, an amendment was passed that dedicated the lottery money entirely to education after an uproar from the public who claimed to have been mislead in the original vote.

Today, the lottery money is not coming to the schools on top of state funding and is instead used to fund specific programs that otherwise might not get funded.

While the local government officials have all supported this idea presented by Nottoway County officials, there seems to be little belief that it will happen. Victoria Councilmember Greg Elam stated, “We should support it and it is a good idea, but I wouldn’t look for it to happen.”