In Florida, where a state income tax is verboten, the housing crisis has had a particularly damaging effect on state revenues. Education is being hit hard. Piling on, today the St. Petersburg Times reports that "lackluster lottery sales" will hurt school budgets even more.
Lawmakers, already grappling with a drop in state tax collections, must finalize a 2008-09 state budget over the next three weeks. And they're already planning to cut school spending for the first time in decades. The new forecast could mean deeper cuts. Lottery dollars account for about 5 percent of the state's education spending.
Last year, the New York Times published a long piece about how lotteries are notoriously unreliable vehicles on which to base education funding. And they may actually make legislators less willing to devote dollars to schools because lawmakers sometimes believe (mistakenly) that their state lottery provides education a lot of support. In Florida, for example, the lottery accounts for only 5 percent of state education spending; in other states, the percentage is less.
Florida, though, is saddled with a particularly dubious class-size requirement , which is popular with citizens but costs the Sunshine State loads of money that could be better spent elsewhere. One wonders if the current budget crunch will cause some reevaluation of education priorities.