Hickey Amends Bill To Place Lottery Under DFA, Not Higher Ed

A bill would abolish the Arkansas Lottery Commission and require the lottery to be managed by the Department of Finance and Administration – not the Arkansas Department of Higher Education, as the bill originally would have mandated.

Senate Bill 7 by Sen. Jimmy Hickey, R-Texarkana, would create the Arkansas Lottery Division in DFA. His original bill would have placed the division in Higher Ed, but the bill was amended on the Senate floor Wednesday after Gov. Asa Hutchinson had earlier said the mechanism was a better fit in DFA.

Hickey said Sunday that the division’s placement is not important, so he deferred to the state’s chief executive, who would be in charge of administering it. He said the change would allow the proposed lottery division’s auditors to report directly to the DFA director.

“The DFA director is probably going to be the best one for that audit function to answer to anyway, so there was a positive to me putting it under DFA due to the governor’s suggestion,” he said.

Since its creation in 2009, the Arkansas Scholarship Lottery has provided more than 133,000 Arkansas Academic Challenge Scholarships, according to its website. But it has been beset with challenges since its founding, including early questions over its management and insufficient revenues that have forced legislators to twice cut the size of the scholarships.

Another bill by Hickey, Senate Bill 5, is meant to address some of those declining revenues. Not quite ready to be considered in committee, the bill would require students to score a 22 on the ACT test in order to qualify as a “level 1 traditional student.” That designation would mean they would receive their scholarships at the beginning of each semester of their freshman year, which is how scholarships are awarded now.

Students who score between a 19 and a 22 would qualify as a “level 2 traditional student” and would receive their scholarships at the end of their freshman year if they maintain a 2.5 grade point average and complete 15 hours a semester, as the scholarship currently requires. After receiving that $2,000 reimbursement, they would then receive their scholarship at the beginning of the next semester, like the level 1 students.

The bill currently also requires public school students to graduate high school with a 3.25 grade point average to qualify as a level 1 student, but Hickey said he might remove that requirement so that public school students do not face stricter requirements than private and home school students. Those students currently are not required to have a particular grade point average.