Michigan Votes Forum

Introduced in the Senate on May 13, 2004, to provide a "place holder" bill for potential action on closing a deficit in the School Aid Fund with money from the General Fund. See Senate-passed bill for details. This came a day before a revenue estimating conference projected a $113.2 million deficit in the 2004-2005 School Aid Fund

The vote was 37 in favor, 0 opposed and 1 not voting

(Senate Roll Call 828 at Senate Journal 104)

Click here to view bill details.

This bill would not have been neccessary if as promised the lotery funds went to the schools in the first place.

If there are any older folks reading this, they might remember some of the wording that went around when the first of now several lottery schemes that are now out there were first started. It was said that all of the monies taken in were "earmarked for schools." Now just where has all of that money gone over the last how many years? Just what do the political people do with all of the money that is allocated in the state budget? How is it that they can raid any pocket that has money in it for any purpose other than what it was intended for? Why and how do they get away with it? If they are incompetent then why aren't they shown to be and then replaced with anyone that might do a better job at handling our tax money.

To answer your question about where the lottery money has gone, my bet is that it has gone to schools as the letter of the law has required. The problem is that lottery income never was destined (by the Legislature) to really supplement state allocations to public schools -- and the lottery enabling proposals never said it was. So in very simple terms what has happened is that for every dollar in lottery money allocated to schools, a dollar of general fund money is taken away from schools and diverted elsewhere. Net supplement for schools (courtesy of the lotter) thus has been zero. Of course, the public really didn’t get it and instead embraced the lottery as a real solution to boosting public school aid from the state. The same kind of shell game was virtually assured by Proposal A, which also crippled local school districts’ ability to raise funds needed for continued support of their programs.