State Saves Teachers With Stolen Lottery Loot
In a political shell game of grand and devious proportions, state legislators this week hailed themselves as heroes for saving hundreds of schoolteacher jobs. Problem is, they did it using upwards of $64 million in lottery revenue that was plundered from counties across the state.
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, for example, announced this week that the state budget was allowing the district to restore 141 teaching positions of the 580 that had been cut earlier this year.
“This is a good day,” Superintendent Peter Gorman said Thursday.
Others said not so fast, and are waiting for the other shoe to drop. Because money in the state budget that was used to restore teaching positions came from lottery funds originally due to counties, it has left local officials scrambling to fill their pilfered coffers.
In Mecklenburg County, it will likely mean finding at least $2 million, and potentially as much as $4 million, from other parts of the board of commissioners’ recently approved budget. Those cuts could come at the expense of CMS.
“The state didn’t do us any favors,” said Mecklenburg County Budget Director Hyong Yi.
Commissioner Bill James, a Republican, was less diplomatic.
“The state stole this loot from us and used it for the schools,” James said. “So I think the schools are the first place we should look for cuts. It makes us the hatchet guys, the heavies, instead of the state. That’s all it does.”
So while Gorman talked cautiously this week about waiting to restore 120 teaching positions funded with county dollars, to see how commissioners deal with the lost lottery revenue, it’s just as likely that the district will actually have to make additional cuts from its budget.
County Manager Harry Jones, in fact, earlier this month and at the direction of the board of commissioners, wrote a letter to Gorman encouraging CMS to establish a $4 million contingency fund in its budget, to deal with potential funding reductions triggered by the state’s lottery grab.
County leaders are still trying to wade through how the state’s action will ultimately impact the local budget, and probably won’t have any specific answers for a few more weeks.
Until then, James said, any discussion about the possibility of restoring teacher positions that are funded with county dollars is premature.
“I don’t know where they think that’s going to come from, unless the county cooks up some more magic-bean money,” James said. “Legislators can thump their chests all they want about how they saved the schools, but all they really did was steal our money and leave us holding the bag.”
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