Several years ago, our state passed legislation to introduce gambling in our state with the understanding that revenue from gambling would be used to fund education. What voters did not realize that the way the bill was written, that revenue did NOT augment the budget, but instead, it is used to offset (i.e. lower) the state's committed responsibility for the education budget line item. My proposal is to use gambling funds to augment the state budget for funding education rather than using those earnings to offset the budgeted funds. Include stipulation that the state education budget cannot be reduced to offset the benefits of gambling revenue.
