I’m sure that everybody’s aware that the HOPE scholarship is in trouble. We’ve got one of the best-run lotteries in the country, but it’s a mature business. Even in a good economy, sales were starting to flatten out, while the expense continued to escalate due to the growing enrollment in our post-high school institutions, as well as the pre-k program.
Our project is a simple solution to a very complicated problem. It truly is, from a funding standpoint, the silver bullet — a silver bullet that can fund the HOPE scholarship for generations of Georgia children to come.
Gaming is already happening in Georgia: It’s the Georgia Lottery. The Georgia Lottery right now has more than 8,000 retailers in the state. You can virtually walk to your nearest grocery store or convenience store and gamble.
Gaming is also happening by Georgians outside Georgia. It’s estimated that a minimum of $200 million a year leaves the state, with Georgians going to neighboring states or other states that provide video gaming or more.
We are looking to trap that money that is going out of the state.
A VLT (video lottery terminal) is really nothing more than an electronic scratch-off ticket. The only difference is that if you walked into our facility on the gaming floor, instead of 20 different scratch-off tickets in one machine, there might be 20 machines that look like slot machines, but offer that same game.
You might ask yourself, if it’s virtually the same game and they’ve got these machines in grocery stores, how will it bring extra money to the lottery? The answer is — this project brings a new customer to the Georgia lottery, a white-collar customer.
The traditional lottery is played on the backs of lower-income people. This facility, a tightly controlled secure entertainment complex, will bring the white-collar customer. We’re going to have fine dining, fine shopping and a 5,000-seat performance venue. The income that will be derived is accretive to the income already generated by the Georgia Lottery. The odds of a white-collar customer sitting down in a gas station playing a VLT machine is almost nil.
At the end of the day, this can do a lot of good for the state. It will bring 2,500 well-paying, permanent jobs — immediately. It will bring 1,000 construction jobs. It will bring the convention business and tourism.
The HOPE scholarship has already done a lot of good for Georgia. I think the economic stimulus and HOPE-saving benefits of this project significantly outweigh the risks. On a very conservative basis, this would provide $350 million a year to the HOPE scholarship; That’s a 40 percent increase in funding. I wholeheartedly believe this is the right thing to do.
Dan O’Leary is president/CEO of O’Leary Partners Inc.
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