High lottery salaries begin to draw questions
by July 16, 2009 8:06 am 59 views
People in Arkansas are beginning to express concerns about the high salaries to be paid to top officials with the Arkansas lottery program. Gov. Mike Beebe is one of those people.
Gov. Beebe told reporters Wednesday he believes the high salaries going to lottery employees may be undermining public confidence in the lottery, according to this report from TalkBusiness.net .
“You’ve got to have the majority of the folks of your state that are confident that you’re doing the right things, and a lot of these decisions with regard to the amount of the salaries that are being paid … are having the effect of undermining that in my opinion,” Beebe told reporters.
The salary of lottery director Ernie Passailaigue is $324,000 a year, and his two top assistants are to be paid $250,000 a year. Passailaigue justified the salaries by saying the lottery will raise $250,000 a year for scholarships to Arkansas’ public universities.
However, Richard Weiss, director of the Arkansas Department of Finance and Administration, is responsible for an agency that collects a little more than $15 million a day (based on gross tas revenue of about $5.5 billion a year), and Gov. Beebe is responsible for Weiss. The salaries of these two men combined don’t add up to that of Passailaigue, and likely don’t add up to the two assistants he has hired.
The Arkansas Lottery Commission voted Wednesday (July 15) to review salary offers made to the lottery’s top new hires after complaints from the public and Gov. Beebe put pressure on the panel to take some action. The lottery commission voted 6-2 to begin reviewing new lottery hires offered annual salaries of $80,000 or more, over the objections of its chairman, Ray Thornton.