By Kristina Fisher, Associate Director, Think New Mexico

Responsible parents would never gamble with their child's college savings account. Yet that is precisely what the New Mexico Lottery is proposing to do with the Lottery Scholarship, which serves as the college fund for many New Mexico students from low and middle income families.

The Lottery is attempting to pass Senate Bill 355, which would eliminate the requirement that a minimum of 30% of lottery revenues be dedicated to the scholarship fund. This requirement was enacted in 2007, based on a proposal by Think New Mexico.

Prior to that time, there was no minimum percentage that the lottery had to deliver to the scholarship fund. The lottery was required to dedicate at least 50% of revenues to prizes, but once that requirement was met, the Lottery paid its operating costs and sent whatever was left over to the scholarship fund.

As a result, scholarships received an average of only 23.76% of lottery revenues a year from 1997-2007.

Fortunately, the legislature enacted the 30% requirement, and it has resulted in an additional $9 million a year going to the scholarship fund.

Despite this track record of success, the Lottery has brought Senate Bill 355 to repeal the 30% minimum and replace it with a requirement that, in future years, the Lottery deliver no less than the amount it delivers in 2015.

The Lottery claims that reallocating some percentage of revenues away from scholarships and toward prizes will result in an increase in lottery ticket sales, which will increase total revenues by enough that the scholarship fund will receive more dollars even as its percentage of revenues decreases.

However, the problem is that the Lottery's proposal would effectively cap the dollars going to scholarships at the current level. After all, Lottery management would have no incentive to deliver one cent more to scholarships than they delivered in 2015, no matter how much revenue the lottery brings in.

It his testimony in favor of Senate Bill 355 before the Senate Corporations Committee, the Lottery CEO stated that one of the Lottery's contracts with an outside vendor is coming up for renewal, and the new contract will likely award the vendor about $4-6 million more than the current contract.

Lottery math is a zero sum game. Every dollar that goes to the vendors