You Decide

Note this is a corrected post.  I referenced the wrong person named Cathy Cox, Democrat, former Secretary of State who ran for Governor, in my previous deleted post which featured the same article below.

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Kathy Cox, Superintendent of Schools State of Georgia and a Republican has proposed raising Georgia Lottery ticket prices from $1.00 to $1.50.

I personally want ticket prices to remain at current levels because Georgia has always captured lottery money from bordering states, from travelers on our extensive interstate system and from people flying through Hartsfield Jackson airport.  

A 50% increase in ticket prices in our current Depression is shortsighted,  money grabbing, and will not increase overall lottery revenues.  Kathy Cox might want to consider trimming salaries of university employees, or simply raising sales tax.  Would suggest contacting your respective state legislator if you're opposed to a ticke price increase.

Or you might want to email Mrs. Cox with a short polite message.

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Kathy Cox
State Superintendent
of Schools (Georgia)

 (404) 656-2800
 (404) 651-8737
state.superintendent@
doe.k12.ga.us

http://www.doe.k12.ga.us/sup.aspx

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"Is Cox taking a gamble in suggesting raising price of lottery tickets to fund schools?

2:06 pm March 12, 2010, by Maureen Downey
Source BogsAJC.com

The suggestion today by state school Superintendent Kathy Cox that lottery ticket prices could be raised by 50 cents to help support k-12 education in Georgia is bound to be controversial because it would shift a larger share of school funding on low-income Georgians.

My former colleague Jim Wooten contended that the lottery took “poor people’s butter-and-egg money.” I argued that all of us are entitled to waste our own money. (I come from a family where my aunts and parents were weekly lottery ticket buyers. I don’t buy them.)

When the AJC looked at lottery sales by zip codes in 2003, we found the areas where people tend to play the lottery most and benefit least from HOPE are substantially poorer than areas that receive the most HOPE scholarships. At the time, Zell Miller, the father of the lottery and the HOPE Scholarship, had a retort to that, saying that the lottery was a diversion.

Players “buy that lottery ticket instead of buying People magazine or the National Enquirer, ” Miller said. “They buy that lottery ticket instead of a six-pack sometimes. They buy that lottery ticket instead going to a baseball game.”

According to the AJC:

Cox said during an appearance Friday on CNN that hiking the price by just 50 cents per ticket could raise $350 million to help fill a massive hole left by state budget cuts in the last two years. Cox said raising prices would ensure K-12 got money while also preserving funding for the HOPE college scholarship and state’s prekindergarten program.

The state constitution already allows lottery revenue to go to technology and buildings for elementary and high schools, but lawmakers stopped allotting that money to K-12 in 2003. Cox said the state’s education budget has been slashed by nearly $3 billion in the last 19 months.

http://blogs.ajc.com/get-schooled-blog/2010/03/12/is-cox-taking-a-gamble-in-suggesting-raising-price-of-lottery-tickets-to-fund-schools/?cxntfid=blogs_get_schooled_blog