Lottery Swipes $1.7B From Schools to Fatten Casino Owners

Editor’s Note: Patch is re-running this popular story in case you missed it the first time around.

Written by MARC TORRENCE (Patch National Staff)

New York Lottery slot machines placed in casinos and meant to help fund education have under delivered to school children by some $1.7 billion and have instead have deepened the pockets of casino owners, according to a Buzzfeed News investigation.

Sixty-percent of profits from the slot machines were originally supposed to go to schools across the state. Instead, the earnings being sent to schools is just 45 percent, Buzzfeed found.

• For more, check out the full Buzzfeed investigation here.

The $1.7 billion that schools have missed out on over the life of the program could have paid for 2,300 teachers at median salary for 10 years or 24 million textbooks, Buzzfeed reported.

Over the past three years, schools have missed out on $250 million per year, enough money to fund pre-kindergarten for every low-income family in New York City, Buzzfeed found.

Just weeks after 9/11, New York passed an emergency law that expanded the state lottery to include “video lottery terminals” (VLTs) — video slot machine games designed to give a jolt of funding in the aftermath of the terrorist attack.

The original requirement was 60 percent funding back to schools. When the program opened in 2004, that number was 61 percent, Buzzfeed said.

But the program hasn’t hit that number since, as casino operators who run the machines have argued and lobbied for a bigger cut of the earnings.

The casinos’ cut was supposed to be just 25 percent. Now, they’re pulling in 45 percent of their own, according to Buzzfeed.

• Buzzfeed: Lottery Slot Machines Shortchange N.Y. Schools