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Comment by swsieber | Hacker News Reader

> especially if it's earmarked for childhood education.

If it's earmarked for childhood education then don't be surprised if other childhood education funds are reallocated elsewhere.

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Haha yes ... earmarking funds for noble causes is the ultimate fake out. Lottery money all goes to noble causes right, right?

Depends on your state, but I guarantee the information is available to you. You can ask your state representative for more information if you're curious.

Here's the 2020 financial report for WA's lottery: https://walottery.com/About/assets/docs/20AnnualReport.pdf

Page 31 is probably what you're looking for. The majority of payments ($141 million) went to the Washington Opportunity Pathways Account, relevant statute here: https://app.leg.wa.gov/RCW/default.aspx?cite=28B.76.526

The concern is usually that (made up numbers) school is budgeted at 100M/yr from the general fund. Then they get a lottery that provides 30M/yr, and 100% goes to the schools. Now the schools have 130M/yr right? But the worry is instead they reduce the funds from the general budget to 70M. The lottery money all went to the schools, but the extra 30M went to the general fund.

Yeah, money is fungible. Earmarking for a specific cause X just means less of X's funding comes from the general fund.

You could think of it that way, but funds such as those created by the lottery are less discretionary than the general fund -- so isn't this a good thing?

They won't be in WA. They've been underfunding education for years and are under a state Supreme Court mandate to increase funding. I'm not 100% sure that's still in effect but my property taxes nearly doubled 2017->2018.

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