Staff Photo by Dan Henry/Chattanooga Times Free Press
A regular customer who wished to remain unidentified plays the Georgia Lottery at Plaza Video in Rossville on Friday.Both Tennessee’s and Georgia’s lottery-funded HOPE scholarship programs are struggling to make ends meet as lottery ticket sales slow and education expenses steadily increase.
The education programs pay for college tuition, prekindergarten and technical college tuition. Tennessee’s program also covers after-school programs.
Those programs have grown so popular, and so many students are qualifying — more than half a million are expected to benefit this year — that Georgia has had to pull heavily from lottery reserves since 2009 to meet all its HOPE obligations. Tennessee has seen similar troubles in recent years.
“We’ve got all these potentially growing demands, but there are only so many HOPE dollars that are going to be there,” Rep. John Meadows, R-Calhoun, speaking at a recent roundtable with Chattanooga Times Free Press reporters and editors. “It’s either going to be spread thinner or you’ve got to restrict it.”
In 2011, Georgia’s HOPE Scholarship is projected to have a $270 million shortfall if changes aren’t made, and the deficit could grow even larger in future years. Estimates show the state depleting its HOPE reserves by 2012.