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Tuesday, FEB 10, 2009
We Get Letters

���� "It's A Wonderful Life" should be the theme for the Georgia State Lottery.� In a year in which the state is cutting back on spending, freezing pay and laying off staffers, Georgia Lottery CEO Margaret DeFrancisco received a $150,000 bonus.� In all, lottery staffers received about $2.5 million in bonuses this year.� DeFrancisco said the incentives are necessary to keep the lottery - which set sales records again this year - competitive with other businesses in the market for top workers.� DeFrancisco's bonus was down from the $236,500 she received in 2007 and she also did not get a raise from her $286,000 salary, which is about twice what Gov. Sonny Perdue earns.� Isn't that a shame.

���� Now I happen to disagree completely with this notion.� Yes, bonuses are�great, and they are a good morale booster for employees.� But we also have to face the realities of�out current financial situation.� Here we are having to trim $1.5 to $2.5 billion dollars from our state budget, doing so by cutting benefits and raises to state employees, and we have a semi-government agency that is flaunting money like a rich uncle pulling up in a new Cadillac at�the trailer park.� It creates resentment amongst the many thousands of state employees who are faced with the economic realities of the day.� With unemployment rampant in our state, and expected to increase significantly this next year, the only word needed to keep and attract top workers for the lottery, or ANY employer for that matter, is the promise of a J-O-B.� That's the advice many employees and executives are receiving this year from their corporations.� Sorry, no bonus, but we can keep you on another year.� Be thankful.

���� Apparently I'm not the only one who has come to this conclusion. �House Higher Education Chairman Bill Hembree (R-Winston), who last year pushed a bill calling for more legislative oversight of the lottery, has publicly decried this years�extravagant bonus. "We are dealing with a revenue shortfall and telling each agency to cut 8-10 percent. And this group, which I still consider [a] quasi-government agency, is having parties and having a good old time."� No I must give credit where credit is due.� Georgia's lottery is among the most successful in the nation, increasing sales every year but one since the first tickets were sold in 1993. But it is a PROVEN fact that when times are hard, people are more likely to try for a quick payoff in the form of gambling, whether it be legal or not.� The hundreds of used scratch-off tickets that litter the ground surrounding your neighborhood convenience store attest to that.� The poorer the neighborhood, the more litter.�

���� Now the lottery sales pay for HOPE college scholarships and pre-kindergarten classes for 4-year-olds.� Again this is completely commendable and has been a success, but here is another glitch in the bonus scheme. State lawmakers have stiffened requirements for students to receive a HOPE scholarship, leading to fewer students getting the award. Legislators did so because projections showed the growth in the cost of the HOPE program would outpace the rise in ticket sales.� This begs the question, how many children were denied a college education so the Lottery Corp could receive�the $2.5 million paid in bonuses?� Will those bonus checks have the same long term benefits�to our state that 100 or so college educated young adults would have?� Will the dividends pay off for the next 50 years as it would have in those young students.� I doubt it.� More likely it will be spent on�non-essential consumer goods made in China, or squirreled away into and investment portfolio to be spent in retirement in FLORIDA.� Wise investment indeed.

���� Last year lawmakers debated a bill giving legislative leaders the authority to appoint two-thirds of the Lottery Corp. board. The legislation, which didn't pass, would have forced the corporation to report details of employees' bonuses to lawmakers each year.� State Rep. Hembree, who sponsored one of the bills, said he will refile it for the 2009 session, which begins Jan. 12.� "I am glad they (lottery officials) are successful, but there has to be a limit," he said. "There are probably going to be (more) layoffs in the state government coming up. You've got a person losing their job and you've got someone getting a $150,000 bonus."�

���� I think he may have something there......don't you?

Bill Mauldin

Jackson, GA


 more . . . We Get Letters
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