State Lottery Bill To Maximize Public School Funds Passes Senate Unanimously

A bill that would have the state lottery give the maximum amount possible to California public schools was passed unanimously in the Senate on Thursday 36-0.

Senate Bill 818, authored by Senator Bill Dodd (D-Napa), would require the Director of the California State Lottery to recalculate the optimal prize payout rate at least once every 5 years to keep the funding concurrent with lottery patronization trends. The director would also, by August 2022, conduct a study into finding out what the best prize payout rate would be to maximize the amount of funding allocated to public education each year by the lottery.

The California State Lottery Commission would, in turn, use that rate to set the lottery’s budget each year, beginning in 2023.

Senator Dodd wrote the bill to ensure that California public schools would get the most money possible, especially in the face of state budget emergencies, such as the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic that has disrupted public schooling statewide. State law currently allocates 87% of all money collected by the lottery to go back to the public either through winning payouts or to public schools, with the other 13% going towards lottery operating costs. The amount going to schools has gone up each year since the lottery started in 1985 due to more people playing, with $1.8 billion going to schools in 2019 alone.

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